FSU basketball NCAA tournament bubble watch: February 3

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 (post 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?

Good:
Depaul scores a huge upset against Providence:€” Depaul, an 8 point home dog, beats #11 Provy by 7. Let's hope they can grab a few more upsets before their season ends.
Georgia beats South Carolina — SoCar has a guady record, but their resume has some concerns. Their main problems are that they only have one top 50 win (vs. #48 Alabama at home) and their non-con SOS is 300. They'll have a big opportunity against TAMU this weekend. If they don't get that game, Gamecock fans should be veryyyy nervous down the stretch. Georgia, on the other hand, had a really tough non-con schedule, but they didn't win any games of import. Thus, they remain a fringe bubble team.

Too Early to Tell:
Butler knocks off Georgetown: Both teams really needed this game. Butler comes away with it and continues its very bubbly existence. Georgetown is probably on the bad side of the bubble right now. 
Clemson wins @ Wake:€” Interesting game for bubble purposes. On one hand, we're directly competing with Clemson for an at-large bid. On the other, we played Clemson twice (Wake only once) and we'd like Clemson's RPI to stay right in the 75 range where they are now. An RPI in this range is very unlikely to get an at-large bid, but it'd help our resume a bit. I still think Clemson has some significant work to do if it wants to get in the tourney, so I'm going to chalk this up as a good result for now.

Bad:
LSU beats Auburn:€” expected. LSU has an interesting bubble situation and we need to really root hard against them.
Akron wins @Ohio: Ohio has been slingshoting in and out of the top 100 for awhile. They're out for now but have a chance to get back in if they beat Northern Illinois on Saturday.
Syracuse beats Va Tech in OT:€” Tough loss for VT; huge win for the ‘Cuse. Luckily we'll have a couple chances against the Orange ourselves. 
Alabama beats Miss St in OT: Bad for our RPI and Alabama, despite their bad record, quietly has decent, fringe-bubbly resume. A loss to Miss St would have changed that.

To tonight's games!

Out of conference opponents in action for RPI purposes:

Penn State at Iowa (7 PM, ESPNU)

VCU at LaSalle (7 PM)

Arkansas at Florida (7 PM, SECN)

Charleston Southern at UNC-Asheville (7 PM)

Key games:

GAME OF THE NIGHT: Arizona State at Washington (11 PM, ESPNU). ASU did bubble teams a solid by beating Oregon State last week, and now we're asking the same in Seattle. Devils!

Notre Dame at Miami (7 PM, ESPN2): FSU won't catch Miami. FSU might catch Notre Dame. Plus FSU plays Miami twice and ND once. Hold your nose and go Canes...

St. Bonaventure at St. Joseph's (7 PM): St. Joe's has some serious steam, but not a great strength of schedule. They need to drop a couple. Bonnies!

Davidson at George Washington (7 PM): GW is another A10 bubble team that needs to lose. Wildcats! (that's Davidson)

Marquette at Seton Hall (8:30, FS1): Most brackets have Seton Hall right behind FSU. This would be the game of the night if Marquette had more of a chance of winning.

Kansas State at Kansas (9 PM, ESPN2): K-State needs a big win. Kansas needs to tamp that crap down. Rock Chalk!

Oklahoma State at Texas Tech (9 PM, ESPNU): Texas Tech is grasping at straws. A loss here would be crushing. Cowboys!