FSU basketball gets play-in game winner in latest bracketology projection

The Florida State basketball team hasn’t played since ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi last updated his NCAA Tournament projection, so it’s fitting that the Seminoles have maintained their position in his latest forecast. But that doesn’t mean that their tournament path hasn’t changed significantly.

The ’Noles remain a 6-seed, this time in the East region. And when you think of the east, where might you guess FSU would be opening play? That’s right: San Jose, CA. Lunardi has Florida State facing the winner of a play-in game between 11-seeds Arizona and Minnesota, who are part of his “last four in” category.

Drawing a play-in game winner would seem to be a positive for FSU, as the Seminoles’ first game would come against a team in action just 48 hours prior, a team that also would have had to follow that contest by flying across the country from Dayton, Ohio, to California. However, since the “First Four” began in 2011, at least one of those four teams has made it past the play-in and its next opponent every year.

The winner of that matchup would get the survivor of 3-seed Nevada and 14-seed Northern Kentucky. The squad to emerge from that test would be off to the Sweet 16 in Washington, D.C., against whichever team comes out of the pod including 2-seed Texas Tech, 7-seed Wisconsin, 10-seed Syracuse, and 15-seed UC Santa Barbara.

Across 76 brackets surveyed in Bracket Matrix, Florida State (which appears in all 76 projections) is averaging a seed of 5.54. Team rankings concurs that FSU’s most likely current entry is as a 5-seed. In closing, a note on a rival: Lunardi has dropped the Florida Gators out of his most recent bracket; UF is now included in his “first four out” category.