The Seminoles offered Odom on January 12th and got him on campus last weekend for his first visit. Odom tells me that the Seminoles are very high up on his list of teams recruiting him.
https://floridastate.rivals.com/new...pressed-with-first-visit-plans-official-visit

Primo Spears had a front-row seat for Florida State’s game at North Carolina on Dec. 2. It became an uncomfortable vantage point.

The Seminoles built a 14-point lead early in the second half before seeing it slip away as the Tar Heels used a full-court press to rally and take a 78-70 win.

“I got to spectate last time we played them,” said Spears, who at that point was still a few weeks away from being cleared to play. “We had a 14-point lead. I think we match up great. I think our size kind of gives them problems with Baba (Miller) at the 4. They haven’t seen as much size as we have and I think that kind of affected them last time. The press affected us and I think we’ve grown from that moment. I think we’ll learn from that situation.”

What FSU is now compared to what FSU was then is dramatically different. Forward Cameron Corhen (toe) did not play. Jaylan Gainey (knee) played in 13 minutes and contributed four points and a rebound but it was just his second game. Cam’Ron Fletcher (knee) played 15 minutes but was lost for the season late in the afternoon.

The FSU baseball team began preseason camp today three weeks out from its season opener vs. Butler. Here are three storylines to monitor this preseason entering Link Jarrett's second season atop the program.

Offensive line coach Alex Atkins visited Mobile (AL.) Williamson HS yesterday and gave out multiple offers to Lions prospects.
https://floridastate.rivals.com/news/fsu-offers-2025-four-star-ot-carde-smith-and-multiple-teammates

FSU sports information:

The No. 23 Florida State Women's Basketball team fell to ACC opponent Duke on Thursday night, 88-46, at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

The Seminoles (14-7, 5-4) were out-scored by 17 points in the second and third quarters combined (48-31) against the Blue Devils. Duke shot 53 percent while Florida State struggled from the floor, shooting 22.4 percent.

Sophomore Ta'Niya Latson led FSU with her 18th double-figure game of the season, scoring 15 points.

Taina Mair led Duke with 18 points on 6-of-10 shooting.

Florida State finishes its road trip at Georgia Tech on Sunday at 4 p.m. in another game that will air on the ACC Network.

Not really but I wonder if they are able to admit they were wrong. Coach has pieced together a number of seemingly disparate players (except their length and willingness to buy into his system) into a really good team capable of winning the ACC or at least getting to the semifinals of the ACC tourney. Where are y'all?

Lil Trench Addition! Don’t know much about him. Haven’t had a chance to do any recon. Anyone know what we got outside of an intelligent you man!?

FSU sports information:

No. 23 Florida State Women’s Basketball plays against Duke for the 54th time in series history on Thursday night at 6 p.m. on the ACC Network. The Seminoles have won seven of the last nine meetings against the Blue Devils since 2015.

Thursday’s matchup pits the ACC’s second-highest scoring offense in Florida State (83.5 ppg) against one of the league’s stingiest defenses in Duke (59.6 points allowed), which is one of six ACC teams allowing under 60 points per game.

The league’s single-most influential shot blocker has been FSU junior forward Makayla Timpson, who leads the conference with 55 blocked shots and sits 18 blocks ahead of the next closest player. Collectively, Duke leads the conference with 6.8 blocks per game, which ranks second in the country.

Sophomore Ta’Niya Latson earned another honor on Tuesday, being named an Ann Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard Top 10 Finalist. Latsonwas a finalist for the award last season. In ESPN’s latest Top 25 women’s college basketball player rankings on Dec. 21, Latson was rated15th overall - before she began conference play with three consecutive 30-points games vs. Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and NC State.

Junior guard O’Mariah Gordon has enjoyed an outstanding junior year after an injury-riddled sophomore season. The Bradenton, Fla., nativehas a turnover percentage of just 10.2 percent - meaning the percentage of plays she’s involved in where a turnover is committed. As anAll-ACC Freshman, Gordon’s turnover percentage was 23.4 percent, and was 17.5 percent as a sophomore.

With six wins in the last seven games, the FSU men's basketball team has put together quite a shocking revival. I examined which areas of the game have led to FSU's turnaround and the state of the Seminoles' postseason resume.

Here it is in all its glory: FSU's full 2024 football schedule was released Wednesday afternoon.

FSU sports information:

Coming off an ACC co-championship this past season, the Florida State volleyball team continues to build momentum for next year with the addition of three talented transfers for the 2024 season.

Coach Chris Poole has announced the addition of fifth-year outside hitter Taylor Head (University of Arkansas/Winter Garden, Fla.), fifth-year setter Loren Robertson (University of Memphis/Memphis, Tenn.) and redshirt sophomore middle blocker Kelsey Perry (Iowa State University/Frisco, Texas).

“We are excited to add these three transfers this spring,” Poole said. “All three of these student-athletes have great personalities and are tremendous people on and off the court.”

Head is coming off an outstanding career at Arkansas, enjoying an All-America season in 2023. She totaled 494 kills and averaged 3.89 kills per set on a Razorbacks squad that reached the NCAA Regional Finals. She also averaged 3.2 digs per set and finished second on Arkansas with 406 total digs last year, highlighting her ability as an excellent six-rotation player. Head was also an All-American for Arkansas in 2022, the program’s first since 2017.

A few of her notable performances last season included a 24-kill effort vs. Kentucky on Oct. 22, and a 24-dig performance vs. Wisconsin on Aug. 30. Head will also play beach volleyball for head coach Brooke Niles this spring season.

“Taylor will take advantage of the one-year bonus year and get her graduate degree at Florida State,” Poole added. “She was an All-American at Arkansas who is from the Orlando area, and is a very talented player.”

With the departure of fifth-year senior setter Jelli Draskovic, Robertson steps right in and will have an opportunity to make an impact in her final season of collegiate eligibility. Robertson recorded 304 assists last year, which included 59 against Youngstown State on Sept. 1. As a junior in 2022, she led the Tigers with 1,181 assists.

“Loren was a four-year setter at Memphis and we needed to add depth this year with Jelli graduating. She’s another outstanding addition to this team,” Poole said.

Perry redshirt this past season for Iowa State. As a freshman in 2022, she ranked second on the Cyclones with 92 total blocks. In that same season, she recorded a .700 hitting percentage and had seven kills in a victory over top-ranked Texas.

“Kelsey started the middle position as a true freshman at Iowa State and redshirted last fall in 2023,” Poole added. “With Khori (Louis) and Kiari (Robey) both seniors this coming fall, we needed to bring in depth for now and the future.”

The Seminoles have a chance for a special season in 2024, returning all five ACC award winners and 12 overall student-athletes from last year’s team that finished with a share of the conference title. ACC Co-Player of the Year and senior outside hitter Audrey Koenig headlines a returning unit that could challenge once again as one of the best teams in the conference.

ACC predicted order of finish as well as preseason All-ACC teams are announced:

Kaliq Lockett has told me that he plans to make a visit to Florida State during spring practices and that FSU is a place that he 'definitely wants to visit'. Lockett was offered earlier this week.

While he has had conversations with the staff about when this visit would take place, there is no definitive time table other than spring.

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Any UNC System school — and that includes UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State University — that wants to change athletic conferences will have to get approval from the system president and the board under a policy change approved by a board committee Wednesday.

The change must be approved by the full 24-member Board of Governors before it goes into effect. The University Governance committee approved the move Wednesday.

FSU looks to be in a very strong position here:

FSU sports information:

Florida State indoor and beach volleyball will have strong connections to North America’s newest premier volleyball league: the Pro Volleyball Federation.

Taking advantage of the growth that volleyball has experienced in recent years, the league launches this week and features 132 players across seven teams, which includes locations in Orlando, Atlanta, Omaha, Columbus, Grand Rapids, San Diego and Las Vegas.

Former FSU head indoor volleyball coach Cecile Reynaud will serve as the league’s Vice President of Volleyball Operations, where she will oversee multiple aspects including rules of play, officiating, coach recruitment, International and college relations and other areas.

Reynaud spent 26 years as the head coach of indoor volleyball at FSU, posting a record of 635-326, ranking her ninth all-time in NCAA Division I victories at the time of her retirement. She led the Noles to seven conference championships and earned three ACC Coach of the Year honors. After retiring from coaching in 2001, Reynaud has held many national, international, and administrative positions within USA Volleyball, including serving as Board Chair from 2018-2020.

Reynaud also served as a Research Associate in Florida State University’s highly acclaimed Sport Management School from 2002-2015. She continues to work as a color analyst for many of FSU’s matches as well during the fall season on the ACC Network.

“Cecile Reynaud has been one of the most amazing people to be around. She’s a mentor of mine so I’m very happy to see her involved with a Pro Volleyball league because everything that she touches is successful,” FSU Beach Volleyball head coach Brooke Niles said. “She’s a great leader for women in sports and she’s accomplished so much in her career. I think the league that she’s started is going to be nothing but successful and if I were a current player I would want to play for someone like Cecile in any program that she’s involved in.”

FSU beach volleyball Alumna and Tallahassee-native Madison Fitzpatrick will be a member of the official broadcast team for the Orlando Valkyries. Since finishing her outstanding beach volleyball career with the Seminoles, Fitzpatrick has thrived as a freelance reporter, calling indoor and beach volleyball matches on ESPN, the ACC Network, the SEC Network and more.

She recently provided top-notch sideline coverage at the 2023 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship in Gulf Shores, Ala., for ESPN. She called several ACC and SEC indoor volleyball matches in the Fall 2023.

Fitzpatrick played beach volleyball at Florida State from 2018-2022, posting a record of 90-37 and earning All-America second team and CCSA All-Conference first team honors in 2019. She finished her career in poetic fashion at the 2022 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship, teaming with Alaina Chacon to defeat USC’s highly-touted tandem of Megan Kraft and Sammy Slater, 2-1 (14-21, 24-22, 17-15).

“Madison Fitzpatrick was such an unbelievable player for us. She changed the trajectory of our program,” Niles said. “She performed in pressure situations all the time and she was just such a hard worker and amazing teammate. I’m so proud of her in her next chapter in her life with her sports announcing career, and I know she’s going to put the same energy and effort into anything she does that she brought to our team. I’m just really proud of her, it’s just awesome to see her excel, but I’m not surprised.”

Joining Fitzpatrick as part of Orlando’s official broadcast team is former FSU student and current ACC Network Extra play-by-play announcer Shawn Davison. He attended FSU from 2011-15 and has been an on-air talent through FSU’s Seminole Productions video unit since 2015.

Davison is considered the voice of FSU Volleyball, serving as the play-by-play announcer for the indoor team on several ACC Network Extra broadcasts over the last eight years. He has worked alongside Dr. Reynaud on many broadcasts, and also served as an adjunct professor at FSU specializing in contemporary issues in communication for the last six years.

The Orlando Valkyries begin their inaugural season on Friday, Jan. 26, against the Atlanta Vibe at 7 p.m. at Addition Financial Arena in Orlando on the streaming service Bally Sports Live.

In an effort to bring Osceola readers a clear-eyed view of the lawsuits between FSU and the ACC, we've been in touch with several legal professionals to help us understand the proceedings and where they may lead. Our panel of advisors offer a couple of consensus opinions. One is the lawsuits are critical to the future of both Florida State and the Atlantic Coast Conference and therefore not likelly to be settled quickly. The second consensus opinion is that these cases are in the very early stages and could go in many different directions, so rather than trying to forecast the future, this article focuses on the chronology of how we arrived where we are and what the current action means.

The essence of the FSU and ACC Lawsuits

Final Rivals250 for 2024 class: https://n.rivals.com/prospect_rankings/rivals250/2024

Top 10 risers in final ranking: https://n.rivals.com/news/rivals-rankings-week-ten-biggest-risers-in-the-rivals250-17

Gorney's thoughts: https://n.rivals.com/news/tuesdays-with-gorney-final-2024-rivals250-released

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Here's the second half of my by the numbers look at FSU's transfer additions. This time, I'm looking at the defensive players, their strengths at their previous school and what they are bringing to FSU.

Joe Mauer was a two-sport star in Minnesota and he was committed to Florida State. Of course, the Twins had the first pick in the 2001 draft and grabbed Mauer. He only won three battling titles and the MVP in 2009, batting .306 with 2,123 hits and 143 home runs.

Think I've told this story a few times but it's timely tonight. Back in 2009, each of the FSU beat writers had a chance to sit down with coach Bowden on his golf cart as players were warming up for a practice before the bowl game against West Virginia. We each had 15 minutes.

I asked coach if there was one prospect FSU missed out on that could have helped to turn the program around. He thought for a minute and mentioned CJ Spiller. (No surprise there.) And then he mentioned Joe Mauer. Coach Bowden thought that highly of what Mauer looked like as a quarterback. According to an old ESPN.com story, Mauer as a senior completed 178 of 288 passes for 3,022 yards and 41 TDs.

Mauer was elected into the Baseball HOF on Tuesday night:

Was on the radio call of the game, alongside Jeff Culhane last night in Syracuse. Thoughts from up close. Big time win for the Noles:

Here are my initial thoughts on FSU's 2024 schedule: That late October/early November stretch will be tough but this schedule, which starts slow and has three well-spaced-out bye weeks, is exactly what this FSU team needed.