Stumble out of the gate in a long season and it’s a lamentable down note, though hardly cause for alarm. Stumble again and again and again in a cumulative bellyflop of historic proportion, and however well you recover, you’ve gone a long way toward limiting your postseason options four months later.
That was the case for both Florida State and Louisville before Thanksgiving dawned.
For Florida State, losing four straight to open the 2022-23 season is a tough way to initiate a recovery from a second-division ACC finish and exclusion from the NCAAs for the first time since 2016.