Noles News: FSU ranked No. 11 in 2023 SP+ rankings

Recruiting

With Signing Day officially in the book, attention has been fully turned towards the 2024 recruiting class — you can catch up on all the latest Florida State football recruiting news and pick the brains of our recruiting staff in the latest edition of our recruiting thread.

Florida State has found plenty of success in the transfer portal — but what about high school recruiting? NoleThroughandThrough takes a deep dive into how Mike Norvell and staff have done with prep prospects.

2024 three-star receiver Kevin Levy out of West Palm Beach reported a Florida State offer on Tuesday — Levy also has offers from the Arkansas Razorbacks, Boston College Eagles, Louisville Cardinals, Texas A&M Aggies, Florida Gators, Kentucky Wildcats and NC State Wolfpack, amongst others.

Class of 2024 commitments

QUARTERBACK: 4 star Luke Kromenhoek (GA)

RUNNING BACK: 5 star Kam Davis (GA)

WIDE RECEIVER: 4 star Camdon Frier (FL)

WIDE RECEIVER: 4 star Tawaski “TJ” Abrams (FL)

DEFENSIVE LINEMAN: 3 star Keishawn Mashburn (FL)

DEFENSIVE LINEMAN: 3 star Jamorie Flagg (FL)

DEFENSIVE BACK: 4 star Jordan Pride (FL)

DEFENSIVE BACK: 4 star CJ Heard (GA)

KICKER: Jake Weinberg (FL)

Football

ESPN’s Bill Connelly released his 2023 S&P+ preseason rankings — Florida State comes in at No. 11 and is considered to have the No. 26 defense and No. 8 offense.

Last season’s late surge, combined with the nation’s best returning production percentage, has eased Florida State ever-so-slightly ahead of Clemson in these rankings. But the Tigers remain awfully dangerous.

I could have put FSU on the Sell! list because, like TCU, the Seminoles are projected seven spots worse in SP+ than on Schlabach’s list. It’s the only real disagreement in Schlabach’s top 10. But the schedule hands them a massive opportunity. They are projected favorites of at least nine points in nine of 12 games, with only three relative tossups (vs. LSU in Orlando, at Clemson, at Florida). They will only need a break or two to live up to top-five(ish) hype, even if SP+ still has trust issues because of the Noles’ iffy overall recent history.

SEC: No. 1 Georgia, No. 4 Alabama, No. 6 Tennessee

Big Ten: No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Michigan, No. 5 Penn State

Big 12: No. 9 Texas, No. 14 Oklahoma, No. 19 TCU

Pac-12: No. 8 Oregon, No. 10 USC, No. 13 Utah

ACC: No. 11 Florida State, No. 12 Clemson, No. 28 North Carolina

AAC: No. 37 Tulane, No. 55 SMU, No. 60 UTSA

Sun Belt: No. 54 Troy, No. 65 James Madison, No. 66 South Alabama

MWC: No. 67 Fresno State, No. 68 Boise State, No. 77 Air Force

C-USA: No. 82 WKU, No. 85 Liberty, No. 90 Louisiana Tech

MAC: No. 79 Toledo, No. 91 Miami (Ohio), No. 96 Buffalo

Basketball

Florida State men’s hoops is set to take on Clemson on the road tonight at 7 p.m. — according to DraftKings, FSU is a 10-point underdog to the Tigers with the over/under set at 146.

From FSU Sports Info:

Florida State, which has won five of its last nine games against Clemson, travels to play the Tigers at Littlejohn Coliseum in Clemson, S.C. on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. It is the second game of the regular season between the Seminoles and the Tigers. Florida State has found success on the basketball court at Littlejohn with 11 wins on the road at Clemson since joining the nation’s best collegiate basketball conference for the 1991-92 season. Upon joining the ACC, Florida State won three of its first four games at Clemson as ACC members and have 13 wins in the basketball coliseum on Clemson’s campus. Following Wednesday’s game at Clemson, the Seminoles return home and play host to Boston College on Saturday, February 18, 2023, at 12 Noon. With five regular season games remaining on its schedule, Florida State has three ACC road games and two ACC home games left to play before traveling to the annual ACC Tournament at the Greensboro (N.C.) Coliseum, March 7-11.

Baseball

We’re just a few days away from the first pitch of the Florida State baseball season:

Softball

Another day, another series of Florida State softball wins — Gwyn Rhodes breaks down the Seminoles’ sweep of Florida A&M ahead of this week’s Clearwater Invitational.

All Sports

For the fourth time this season, Florida State Track and Field’s Jeremiah Davis was named the ACC Men’s Field Performer of the Week after he extended his world-leading mark in the long jump to 8.28 this past weekend in New Mexico.

From FSU Sports Info:

Jeremiah finished second in the triple jump on Saturday with a leap of 16.25m. He currently holds the top mark in the ACC this season and the third-best mark in the country with a personal-best 16.44m trip jump at Clemson on January 24.

The Noles’ next competition begins on February 23rd at the ACC Indoor Championships in Louisville, Ky.

Florida State diver Samantha Vear finishing in sixth place in the women’s 3-meter springboard on the opening night of the ACC Championships, leading off a plethora of Seminoles as the women and men both seek conference titles.

From FSU Sports Info:

Vear had to work her way up the leaderboard in prelims after sitting in 17th place early. In the fifth round, she scored 54 points on her inward 2 ½ somersault pike, moving her into 10th place, which was just outside of the final. She saved her best dive for last, scoring 55.50 points on a front 2 ½ somersault 1 twist pike for eighth place and a berth in the final, besting the ninth-place diver by just over one point at 293.05.

“Sammy did a great job today,” FSU head diving coach John Proctor said. “She’s been here three years and never been to this meet due to injuries. She stepped up and finaled in her first ACC Championships. It was a great confidence booster.”

The women’s 200 medley relay put up a season-best time at 1:36.61 behind Tania Quaglieri, Julia Mansson, Jenny Halden, and Gloria Muzito for sixth place to start the night. The swim was an NCAA provisional time.

Phoebe Griffiths, Quaglieri, Sophie Freeman and Edith Jernstedt shaved over nine seconds off their seeded time in the 800 free relay, touching at 7:10.79 for seventh place.

Mason Herbet, Tommaso Baravelli, Adrian Aguilar, and Ian Cooper posted a 1:24.97 for eighth place in the men’s 200 medley relay.

In the 800 free relay, Peter Varjasi, Yordan Yanchev, Utku Kurtdere and David Quirie went over 12 seconds faster than their seeded time, touching seventh at 6:17.12, which is an NCAA B standard.

The Seminoles had three scorers in the men’s 1-meter competition, led by Tazman Abramowicz in 15th (284.60), followed by Darwin Nolasco in 17th (281.40) and Jesco Helling in 21st (271.40).

The 18th-ranked men’s team is in eighth place with a tally of 90 points after three events, while the women are in sixth with 118.

Prelims start at 9:30 a.m., on Wednesday with the top 24 swimmers advancing to finals at 5:30 p.m.

Will FSU Esports be able to bounce back after a rough week?

FSU set a record for first-semester student retention — 99%:

FSU’s historic first-semester retention, in a class of more than 6,000 students, is among the highest in the nation at both public and private universities, according to FSU’s Office of Institutional Research, which monitors enrollment and tracks retention rates between years and semesters.

“The record high fall-to-spring retention rate represents the university’s excellence and upward momentum,” said President Richard McCullough. “I’m grateful to all the dedicated faculty and staff who work every day to make sure our students thrive here and have many reasons to stay.”

A team of FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers at the High-Performance Materials Institute is exploring the thermal limits of advanced nanomaterials:

The research team, led by Assistant Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Rebekah Sweat, completed the first-ever study on how purified boron nitride nanotubes remain stable in extreme temperatures in inert environments.

Boron nitride nanotubes, or BNNTs, are stronger and more resistant to high temperatures than carbon nanotubes. Like their carbon cousins, they are structures measured by the nanometer — a length equal to one-billionth of a meter.

But manufacturing these materials is challenging. Current methods for BNNTs are newer and do not yet produce the same quantities as methods devised for carbon nanotubes. That’s why learning more about how they function is important.

The researchers found that BNNTs are fully stable at up to 1800°C in an inert environment, the chemically inactive atmosphere in which they are manufactured. They also learned that BNNTs can withstand temperatures at 2200°C for short periods without losing the mechanical properties that make them so effective.