Noles News: Tramell Jones Jr., an FSU quarterback commit, doing well at the Elite 11
Following a 26-win turnaround from the previous season, Florida State will finish tied for third nationally, a season after finishing last in the ACC and missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 45 years. The 26-win increase is twice as good as the program’s highest year-over-year performance (+13 wins from 2001 to 2002).
In the seventh inning, Daniel Cantu and Alex Lodise each hit back-to-back home runs—their ninth of the season. FSU has nine home runs this season, including back-to-back ones in the last games of the year.
FSU’s team total of 131 home runs is second only to the 1985 squad’s 146 (82 games) in program history (1982, 74 games).
To close off the season, FSU hit a home run in 19 straight games, which is the second-longest stretch in team history and only surpassed by the 21-game streak that came just before. FSU has hit a home run in 61 of 66 games this year, including 40 of the previous 41.
With the longest on-base streak of his career—23 games—Lodise finished the season on base.
With a single in the sixth inning, James Tibbs III ties his career-long 24-game on-base streak to close out the season.
Max Williams finished the year with a career-high 11-game hitting streak and 21-game on-base streak, going 2-for-4 with his 11th double. Three of his 19 multi-hit games came in the CWS.
Brennen Oxford, a senior pitcher, appeared in three College World Series games in addition to his team-high thirty-two appearances this season. 75 pitches was a career best for him.
It was Joe Charles’s first College World Series appearance. His 30 outings rank second among FSU pitchers and represent a career best. His 4.2 innings thrown and five strikeouts were career highs, and he retired the first nine hitters he faced.
John Abraham, a rookie pitcher, earned his first postseason start as well as his third of the year.
With an overall record of 49-17, Florida State concludes the season with the most victories since finishing 50-17 in 2012.
At the MCWS, Florida State’s record fell to 32-48 all-time. The Seminoles were visiting the MCWS for the first time since 2019 and for the third time overall with 24 trips. The Seminoles were vying for their first championship and are still the only team with more than 15 MCWS appearances without a title.
The Seminoles have made 60 appearances in the NCAA Tournament overall, finishing 206–134 overall. With 206 victories, they are second only to Texas (257 wins, 63 appearances) in NCAA history.
The Seminoles finished 23–31 the previous season and finished with 49 victories this time around. The 26-win increase is the greatest in program history as well as the biggest year-over-year gain in Division I this season.
After leading Notre Dame to a 1-2 record in the MCWS in 2022, head coach Link Jarrett’s record in the competition slipped to 3-4 (2-2 at FSU). He is the twelfth coach to win an MCWS while overseeing many programs.
In his four trips to the NCAA Tournament as a head coach, Link Jarrett’s record fell to 18-8 overall.
Link Jarrett joins Mike Gillespie as the only coach to have led 16 separate programs to the MCWS after participating in several MCWS as a student-athlete at Florida State. Jarrett is the 16th coach overall to accomplish this feat. This season, he and Brian O’Connor are the only two coaches who have both competed in the Division I Men’s College World Series as players and coaches.
It is the first time since 2012 that Florida State has won multiple games in a single trip to Omaha, and only the second time in its previous six MCWS outings. In the previous 20 years, the Seminoles had three 1-2 seasons (2010), 2017 and 2019, one winless trip to Omaha (2008), and a 2-2 season in 2012.
Florida State matched for the second-most home runs in program history with two on Wednesday afternoon, bringing their season total to 131 (146 in 1985; 131 in 1982). In 61 of the 66 games this season, the Noles have hit a home run.
Starting with a game against Pitt on May 11th, FSU has now hit a home run in 19 successive games. Only the 21-game HR run from earlier this season is longer than the 19-game HR streak in program history.
Furthermore, the Seminoles’ 78 home run improvement from the previous season is the biggest in the nation, surpassing Austin Peay’s 71-HR gain from the previous year.
Florida State has drawn the most walks of any team in this year’s NCAA Tournament—63—up until only one walk on Wednesday. In Omaha, the Seminoles had also drawn 23 walks.
Florida State has outscored opponents 89-30 in the third inning this year, including 9-1 in Omaha and 16-1 in its previous eight games, despite not scoring in the third inning tonight.
With four games played in the MCWS (its 24th edition), Florida State has scored 29 runs, their highest total since 28 in 1999. After four games in the MCWS, the Seminoles’ 29 runs scored were likewise the second-highest of any ACC club, only surpassed by Clemson’s 30 runs in 1996.
With nine.6 runs per game in seven games in NCAA Tournament, Florida State has the second-highest run total of any team this season in the tournament, after Tennessee’s 87. 9.9 runs in each match The only other teams in the postseason with an average of at least 10 runs per game were Florida State and Tennessee going into the contest.
Max Williams extended his hitting streak to 11 games and his on-base streak to 21 games by finishing the day 2-for-4 with a double and a single. His 19th multi-hit game of the season included his two-hit day.
Marco Dinges went 1-for-4 on Wednesday, extending his streak of games played at bat to eighteen.
With 16 hits in the NCAA Tournament this year, Max Williams and Marco Dinges are tied for the second-most of any player, with Blake Burke of Tennessee having the most with 17.
The bottom of the sixth inning saw James Tibbs III bloop a single into center, extending his team’s active on-base streak to 24 games.
Cam Smith concluded the season with 106 hits, ranking second nationally behind Tennessee’s Christian Moore (109), despite not earning a hit on Wednesday.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, Daniel Cantu gave the Seminoles the lead with a home run into the right field bullpen, his ninth of the year.
After after, Alex Lodise launched a solo 359-foot home run to right for his ninth home run of the year. This season, Florida State has recorded back-to-back home runs in a game nine times.
Since the MCWS moved to Charles Schwab Field Omaha in 2011, only five players have hit back-to-back home runs: Florida’s Wyatt Langford and Jac Caglianone in 2023, Ole Miss’s TJ McCants, Calvin Harris, and Justin Bench in 2022, Florida State’s Quince Nieporte and Cal Raleigh in 2017. Daniel Cantu and Alex Lodise’s back-to-back home runs were the only instances of this happening. Since the MCWS moved to Charles Schwab Field Omaha in 2011, three of the five occurrences of back-to-back home runs have been attributed to Florida State.
When Florida State’s Quincy Nieporte and Cal Raleigh hit back-to-back home runs in the 9th inning against LSU in 2017, it was the first time in stadium history (they accomplished it on back-to-back pitches).
In just his third start of the season, John Abraham gave up three runs on two hits in 0.1 innings thrown, dropping him to 5-2 overall.
John Abraham is the first Florida State starting pitcher to accomplish so since Brandon Leibrandt against Arizona in 2012, and he is the sixth pitcher overall to record one or less outs in the MCWS. This marked the third game in the 2024 MCWS in which a starting pitcher had one or less outs (Chris Stamos of Tennessee vs FSU, 0.1 IP, and Dominic Niman of Kentucky against Florida, 0.1 IP).
