FSU basketball NCAA tournament bubble watch: February 2

Welcome to the Florida State basketball rooting guides, where we figure out which teams to hate. The basic premise is that while FSU basketball may be ON the bubble, their season is not progressing IN a bubble. In short, FSU's next 10 games will go a long way in determining if they dance and what their seed might be, but this is also influenced by literally hundreds of games played by different teams in different conferences.

The rooting guides try to identify those games. That way you can tune your television to a random Pac 12 game and actually care about which team wins.

We follow four brackets to figure out where Florida State is currently situated. Those brackets are SB Nation (Chris Dobbertean), ESPN (Joe Lunardi), CBS (Jerry Palm), and the composite Bracket Matrix.

This is where FSU currently stands:

SB Nation: 10-seed (post NCSU)

ESPN: 1st four out (pre NCSU)

CBS: 9-seed (pre NCSU)

Bracket Matrix: 11-seed

Clearly, FSU is considered a bubble team, so in the rooting guides we look for games that impact the bubble. If Florida State were to advance to a 6-seed, for example, then we'd look for games that would influence that portion of the bracket.

Which games are important? Luckily, Matt Minnick already covered that in detail.

What happened yesterday?

Great: THE NOLES WON

To tonight's games!

Out of conference opponents in action:

Akron at Ohio (7 PM, ESPN3)

Providence at DePaul (9PM, FS1) DePaul is gonna get killed, but we can dream

Alabama at Mississippi State (9 PM, SECN)

Key games:

GAME OF THE NIGHT: South Carolina at Georgia (7 PM, ESPNU): The Gamecocks are likely just ahead of Florida State, and Georgia is in the way back. Dawgs!

Georgetown at Butler (7 PM, FS1): This is similar to the FSU - Clemson game, where we have two teams clinging to the bubble going head to head. One will lose. Woohoo.

LSU at Auburn (7 PM, SECN): There is zero reason that LSU should be considered a tournament team, so of course ESPN is projecting them as a 10-seed. Unfortunately, ESPN isn't just promoting their product. It is also that ESPN knows that there will be tremendous interest in seeing Ben Simmons make the dance, and so name value matters. War damn Eagle!

Clemson at Wake Forest (8 PM, ESPN3): Probably best if Clemson just falls off the bubble. Plus Wake Forest is taking a page from FSU and giving away free bacon. Makes perfect sense.

Virginia Tech at Syracuse (8 PM, ESPN3): Were we safely in, Syracuse would be the pick here since the Noles face them twice. But 'Cuse and FSU are pretty much neck and neck on the bubble. Let's go Hokies!

Colorado State at San Diego State (11 PM, ESPN2): It would be beneficial to all bubble teams if the Mountain West could become a 1-bid conference. The Aztecs have the best chance of an at-large. Rams!