Happy Friday and welcome in to Noles News Now, your audio home for all things happening in Florida State athletics on the Tomahawk Nation podcast network. I’m your host Brian Pellerin this Friday, September 9th. Thanks so much for joining me and a quick thank you to Perry for covering the last few episodes for me while I dealt with a family emergency.

This Friday is unfortunately not a football Friday for FSU. The Noles will get a chance to heal their bodies with a bye week after their first 2-0 start since 2016.The next game on the docket is Louisville the following Friday and if you’re interested in a sneak peak of the Cardinals, they’re in action tonight... this Friday against UCF. That game is in Orlando at 7:30 Eastern tonight on ESPN2. Louisville is looking to avoid an 0-2 start themselves after a blow out loss to Syracuse a week ago. UCF is a 5.5-point favorite. A Louisville loss could really quiet the crowd for next week’s game in Louisville. Something to keep an eye on.

If FSU is able to get the win next week, they’ll already be halfway to bowl eligibility, but ESPN’s football power index likes their chances to go bowling already. TheFPI gives them a 94.2% chance to reach a bowl game with a projection of 7.7 wins and a 4.2% chance to win the division. That would be their first bowl game since 2019.A big reason for their growth will be this strong d-line especially the emergence of Jared Verse. The Albany transfer’s impressive Week 1 was enough to land him onPro Football Focus’ All-Defensive Team for the week.

The win over LSU will likely prove dividends in recruiting as well with a lot of recruits in attendance including 2024 five-star RB Kam Davis who was rocking garnet and gold attire in the Superdome. The Noles commit has also received an invite to the All-American Bowl. One of the big names left on the 2023 board for the Noles is4-star linebacker Blake Nichelson, who just announced his commitment date on September 20th. That’s next Wednesday. Nichelson will choose between FSU, Oregon, and UCLA live on Youtube.

Elsewhere on campus, the FSU soccer team rattled off another dominant victory, posting a 5-0 dub on Florida Gulf Coast. The FSU volleyball team has posted its 5thstraight win en route to its best start since 2014. And the FSU men’s golf team is set to open its year with the Maui Jim Intercollegiate around 1 pm on Friday.

If you’re unsure how to spend this first bye week and looking for games to watch, check out my picks article on Tomahawk Nation as well. I along with anybody who wants to play along in the comments will give picks to the 10 games I think are the best to watch this week. Some of the ones highlighted this week — Alabama at Texas, the return of Sam Hartman for Wake Forest at Vanderbilt, Baylor at BYU, Appalachian State visiting Texas A&M, Kentucky at Florida, and many more. It’s all for fun and takes like 2 seconds to hammer out your picks. You can join in on the fun on Tomahawk Nation dot com and we use the comments to talk about the games as they happen as well.

That’ll do it for this week’s Noles News Now. As always, please follow, rate and review the show if you like what you hear. It helps us out a lot and allows us to continue bringing you the content we do every day. Including this podcast that you can catch three times a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So until Monday, I’m Brian Pellerin. Thanks for listening.

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