In the upcoming season, Syracuse basketball will attempt to reverse course after a sluggish 2024-25 season. The Orange, under second-year head coach Adrian Autry, went 14-19 overall a stanza ago, its worst record in decades.
Heading into 2025-26, the ‘Cuse eyes returning to the annual Big Dance after a four-year absence from the NCAA Tournament. Orange hoops fanatics are clamoring for the ‘Cuse to hear its name called on Selection Sunday in March of next year.
Eric Devendorf, the former Syracuse basketball star who is now a college basketball analyst for ESPN and the ACC Network, said in an interview on Friday with the ESPN Radio Syracuse program “Orange Nation” that the program’s expectation for 2025-26 should be getting back to March Madness.
Eric is 144 percent right. “When you talk about this university, regardless of what they did the year before…it’s NCAA Tournament,” he said via an X post from the account Cuse Sports Talk.
Syracuse basketball has missed the Big Dance on four straight occasions.
Devendorf brings up an interesting point. Yes, Autry and his team struggled in 2024-25. However, even with that season’s overall result, the Orange is still a relatively big brand in college basketball, and the ‘Cuse is one of the top-10 all-time winningest programs in the sport.
So the expectation, year after year, should always be to make the NCAA Tournament. In fact, I’d contend that the Orange shouldn’t just want to make the Big Dance. The ‘Cuse should expect to contend for an Atlantic Coast Conference title, earn a high seed in March Madness and go on a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
That being said, for Syracuse basketball nuts like myself, should we have lowered our expectations at all in recent years because our beloved Orange isn’t at the normal level we’ve been used to seeing?
From 2009 until 2014, for example, the ‘Cuse won at least 27 games in every term, and Syracuse basketball never was seeded lower than a No. 4 in the NCAA Tournament. Since then, though, the Orange has been so-so in the ACC and missed the Big Dance numerous times.
The ‘Cuse did make the Final Four in 2016, as well as the Sweet 16 in 2018 and 2021, but Syracuse basketball was a double-digit seed in those three instances. My point here is that, 10-15 years ago, we expected the Orange to notch 25-plus victories and receive a top-four seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Fast-forward to today, and those expectations are tempered. No doubt about it. Yet as Devendorf said, regardless of the fact that the ‘Cuse was 14-19 a season ago, Syracuse basketball’s expectation in the upcoming campaign should be to land a bid to the 2026 NCAA Tournament.
The Orange’s roster of 13 scholarship players features two key returnees, a six-member transfer class, and a five-member prep cycle that is No. 10 around the country, per the industry-generated 247Sports Composite.
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