Noles News: 2023 ACC Kickoff underway, FSU takes stage today

Recruiting

2025 defensive lineman Jaylen Williams out of Palatine, Illinois received a Florida State offer on Tuesday. The 6-foot-6, 265 pound prospect is considered the No. 24 defensive lineman in the 2025 class by the 247Sports Composite rankings and also holds offers from the Auburn Tigers, Texas A&M Aggies, Wisconsin Badgers, Oregon Ducks, Tennessee Volunteers, Michigan Wolverines and others:

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.

QUARTERBACK: 4 star Luke Kromenhoek (GA)

RUNNING BACK: 4 star Kam Davis (GA)

RUNNING BACK: 4 star Micahi Danzy (FL)

WIDE RECEIVER: 4 star Camdon Frier (FL)

WIDE RECEIVER: 4 star Lawayne McCoy (FL)

WIDE RECEIVER: 4 star BJ Gibson (GA)

WIDE RECEIVER: 4 star Elijah Moore (MD)

TIGHT END: 5 star Landen Thomas (GA)

OFFENSIVE LINEMAN: 4 star Jonathan Daniels (FL)

OFFENSIVE LINEMAN: 3 star Tye Hylton

DEFENSIVE LINEMAN: 4 star DD Holmes (DC)

DEFENSIVE LINEMAN: 3 star Jamorie Flagg (FL)

LINEBACKER: 3 star Jayden Parrish (FL)

DEFENSIVE BACK: 4 star Ricky Knight III

DEFENSIVE BACK: 3 star CJ Heard (GA)

DEFENSIVE BACK: 3 star Rydarrius “Red” Morgan (AL)

KICKER: 3 star Jake Weinberg (FL)

Football

The 2023 ACC Kickoff is underway, with commissioner Jim Phillips taking the podium on Tuesday to.talk:

TV:

In addition to our focus on our future in Charlotte, we remain in constant communication with Disney and ESPN, as there is no single business partnership in our industry that is valued more than with a conference’s media rights holder. In certainly one of the most turbulent times in history for both media and college sports, I and the ACC have never felt better about our relationship than we do today. Our commitment to collaborate on way the ACC from a revenue and exposure standpoint has been unwavering.

Our schools and fans will immediately benefit from significantly increased ACC football television exposure on ABC and ESPN platforms. Elevated production value and innovative creative approaches tied to those ABC broadcasts. A commitment to greater integration of ACC schools across all aspects of the network: Production, programming, storytelling, sales, and marketing, and a collective mission to enhance and grow this unique and very valuable are shared venture.

In sum, a comprehensive commitment from the top leadership levels to support our shared goals to innovate, grow, and thrive competitively, holistically, and financially into the next decade and beyond.

The ACC’s finances:

I’m well aware of the narrative and stories surrounding the ACC and our members as well as the frustrations of some of our schools on our financials, but these are not new. The initiatives I just mentioned combined with future endeavors are designed to ensure that the ACC remains a healthy and vibrant conference that competes at the highest level, and is capable of winning nine national titles like this past year, if not more.

At the end of May following an analysis and discussion that took place throughout the past year, the board announced its endorsement of a success incentive initiative that will begin during the 2024/’ 25 academic year. Under this initiative financial distribution enhancements based on team performances from revenue-generating postseason competition will allow our schools to invest and achieve additional revenue.

The working group of presidents and chancellors continue to make progress, and following a full board decision in the future, we’ll certainly share more details.

While there are legitimate discussions and stories regarding revenue and our membership, it’s important that all of us never lose perspective on just what we are doing together.

The last two years the ACC leads all conferences in NCAA titles. All 15 schools won an ACC regular season or championship title this past year. Academically there are no better collection of schools, and our student-athlete experience and support beyond athletics and academics is second to none.

So revenue generation continues to be a priority. But let me be clear also, this league is third right now in revenue as we go forward into wherever the next TV deals are for other conferences where, we’ve looked at it. We’ve had multiple TV consultants. Third is certainly a good position, but we want to gain and gain traction financially in order to close the gap with obviously the SEC and the Big Ten, who have leapfrogged everyone.

I think one of the presidents said it best, are we chasing a dollar amount, or are we chasing success? I think there’s a difference there. If you are chasing a number, it takes you down a different path. If you are chasing success competitively in football and basketball and all of our sports, then I think every institution has an idea of what they need.

So, again, I feel really strongly about this league, and I think people are missing it when they’re not paying attention to the results of how well the conference has done. So it will continue to be a priority and certainly has the attention of everybody from our board on down.

Then the CW relationship, listen, we’ve had a great relationship with our TV partners. Raycom has been a wonderful partner of the ACC forever, and they were incredibly helpful along with ESPN in getting the CW, and I think all of you understand distribution and eyeballs and being able.

To be visible in all of the regions that our schools are, but across the country, and that was one of the things when I came almost, well, two and a half years ago, the frustrations that we had about “I can’t find my team, I can’t find some of the games.

And NIL:

The ACC remains strongly in favor of our student-athletes benefitting from the use of their name, image, and likeness. The framework that we continued to advance includes preempting the patchwork of inconsistent state laws through federal legislation is critical to providing clarity for our student-athletes and institutions. There’s a need to reaffirm that the student institutional relationship is just that. Our athletes are students, not employees.

The college athletics enterprise must also be able to enhance and adapt the student-athlete experience without the constant threat of lawsuits that use funds for defense that could otherwise benefit our student-athletes.

At the same time we have been crystal clear about protecting our athletes from bad actors through agent certification, transparency, and consistent disclosure of NIL deals and continued education of student-athletes around financial literacy and personal branding. We owe this to all our student-athletes.

You can find the whole transcript here.

Florida State takes the stage today, with head coach Mike Norvell, quarterback Jordan Travis, defensive end Jared Verse and linebacker Kalen DeLoach set to speak:

Basketball

Five Seminoles – John Butler (Portland Trail Blazers), Mfiondu Kabengele (Atlanta Hawks), RaiQuan Gray (Brooklyn Nets), Luke Loucks (Head Coach, Sacramento Kings), and Deividas Dulkys (Assistant Coach, Sacramento Kings) – represented Florida State in the 2023 NBA Summer League:

Butler averaged 4.3 points, 2.0 rebounds, 0.5 blocked shots and 0.5 steals in helping lead the Trail Blazers to a 3-2 record. He played in all five games for Portland and averaged 11.8 minutes played per game as the Trail Blazers finished with a 3-2 record. Butler scored five points and added 2 rebounds against Houston and had three points and one rebound against San Antonio.

Kabengele was productive for the Hawks as he averaged 19.3 minutes played while averaging 8.0 points and 4.4 rebounds per game. He shot .542 from the field, .364 from the 3-point line and better than 70 percent from the 3-point line. Kabengele totaled 13 points and five rebounds in a game against Loucks and Sacramento and totaled 13 points and five rebounds in a win over Minnesota.

Gray averaged 18.9 minutes played in five games. In his five appearances, Gray averaged 7.4 points, 4.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists and was perfect from the free throw line. Gray scored his summer league high of 12 points with nine rebounds against Cleveland, and scored five points and totaled four rebounds against the Knicks.

Loucks and Dulkys formed one of the great backcourt duos in Florida State history (2009-12) as together they led the Seminoles to an appearance in the ACC Tournament Championship game for the first time in school history in 2009, then led Florida State to the first ACC Tournament Championship in school history in 2012. Loucks led Sacramento to a 5-2 record including a victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in Loucks’ first games as the Kings’ head coach in the California Summer league.

Baseball

Softball

Florida State softball’s Kaley <udge has been nominated for the NCAA Woman of the Year award:

The NCAA Woman of the Year program honors the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of graduating female college athletes from all three divisions.

Mudge has proven to be phenomenal on and off the softball diamond. In 2023, Mudge helped the Seminoles to another ACC Championship and their second NCAA WCWS National Runner-Up finish in the last three seasons. Mudge earned Second Team All-ACC honors and was named to the WCWS All-Tournament Team for the second time in her career. Mudge started 67 games for the Seminoles and was second on the team with a .346 batting average while driving in 43 runs.

In the midst of the 2023 season, Mudge was chosen to speak in front of the country’s leaders at the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing titled “Taking the Buzzer Beater to the Bank: Protecting College Athletes’ NIL Dealmaking Rights” in Washington D.C. in March. Mudge was the lone active student-athlete to speak at the hearing and was joined by Patriot League Commissioner Jennifer Heppel, Virginia State University President Dr. Makola M. Abdullah, former NFL player Trey Burton, Washington State Director of Athletics Pat Chun and Executive Director and Founder of the College Football Players Association Jason Stahl.

In May, Mudge graduated Cum Laude with a degree in exercise physiology. She was one of 53 athletes to earn the ACC Postgraduate Scholarship while also earning a spot on the All-ACC Academic Team and the ACC Honor Roll.

The Woman of the Year Selection Committee made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose the Top 30 honorees — 10 from each division — from the conference-level nominees. The Top 30 honorees will be announced in October.

The selection committee will then determine the top three honorees in each division from the Top 30, and the nine finalists will be announced in November.

From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics will choose the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year. The honorees will be celebrated at the Woman of the Year Award Ceremony at the NCAA Convention in Phoenix in January.

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