Syracuse Orange men’s basketball: is the NCAA Tournament still within reach?

Fans woke up Sunday morning feeling as great as ever this season, and it’s hard to blame them after the Syracuse Orange men’s basketball team (20-10, 11-8) topped the Louisville Cardinals for its fourth straight win and moved into a top-four seed in the upcoming ACC Tournament.

Let’s get real here: did we ever think we’d say that at any point this year? Alas, Adrian Autry in his first year still has the Orange floating around “in position to be in position” territory when it comes to locking in an NCAA Tournament bid. With the end of the season near, Syracuse is preparing for a crucial next two weeks with sneaking into this year’s tournament on the line.

And yes, Syracuse still has a chance. The odds are indeed pretty small and the Orange would need to pretty much keep up with their recent winning ways. The overall resume has some quality wins and metric to point to positively coupled with questionable losses and general inconsistency. But as the saying goes: “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Saturday night’s win over Louisville was coupled with favorable results across the board for the Orange when it comes to the rest of the teams at or near the bubble. Wake Forest, Virginia, NC State and Clemson all dropped their respective games. The Orange still have one last opportunity to land another significant Quadrant 1 when they take on Clemson in the regular season finale this Tuesday, and there’s still some games to be had in the upcoming ACC Tournament.

Syracuse’s standing within the the bracketology conversation starts and ends by looking at the current resume.

Syracuse is currently 6-9 combined versus Q1 and Q2 opponents (2-7 versus Q1 and 4-2 versus Q2). The Orange home win over #7 North Carolina is easily their most valuable victory all year.

Outside of that, Syracuse notably boosted its resume with a season sweep over Pittsburgh (one Q1 win and one Q2 win), beat Oregon by 20 points on a neutral-site (Q2 win) and defeated NC State on the road (Q2 win). Syracuse is also 9-1 versus Q3 opponents and 4-0 versus Q4 opponents.

The Orange also arguably faced one of the toughest schedules in the NCAA this season, as ESPN has Syracuse 40th in rank of strength of record and 59th in strength of schedule (fifth and eighth in the ACC, respectively).

At the same time, we can’t ignore the aforementioned holes in Syracuse’s resume. The Orange dealt with tough losses to Florida State, Boston College and Georgia Tech which did make their path to the NCAA Tournament a bit tougher to visualize.

Reason being: outside of their wins over UNC and Pitt, the Orange have really fared poorly versus Q1 opponents. In Syracuse’s seven Q1 losses, only one was a single-digit loss (77-68 to Clemson).

In total, the Orange lost their Q1 games this season by an average of nearly 22 points per game. The really bad losses were against UNC (by 36 points), Wake Forest (by 29 points), Virginia (by 22 points) and Duke (by 20 points). Additionally, Syracuse also dealt with two straight non-conference losses to ranked Gonzaga and Tennessee squads at the Maui Jim Maui Invitational.

Double-bye in the ACC Tournament or not, it still feels like the Clemson game is a must-win. We can go on and on about the Orange’s current ranking of 84th in the NET, but at the end of the day, quality road and neutral-site games bring a ton of value when you look purely at who you beat and who you didn’t.

Most bracketology projections (namely ESPN, CBS Sports, T3 Bracketology, The Field of 68 and JBR Bracketology) tend to have the following ACC teams named for NCAA Tournament consideration: North Carolina, Duke and Clemson... decent gap... Virginia and Wake Forest. After that, there’s Syracuse and Pitt fighting it out while the rest of the ACC’s middle pack seems to be trending the other way.

JBR Bracketology recently moved the Orange into “Next Four Out” status and T3 Bracketology slotted Syracuse as the seventh team just on the outside looking in, while the rest of the bracketology updates either don’t mention the Orange or likewise put them in the “under consideration” category.

As always, the Orange will have to take things one step at a time. Up next is Clemson, and that game will determine any future conversations regarding the postseason.

The chances might still be a bit low, but not impossible.

Now it’s your turn: is a bid for the upcoming NCAA Tournament realistic for Syracuse? Or is it too little, too late?