F
or the first time in two years, Syracuse women’s basketball enters the postseason with some promise. After being selected 13th in the Atlantic Coast Conference preseason poll, the Orange have exceeded all expectations, going 22-7 in the regular season as a projected No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Syracuse’s first event of March, though, is the ACC Tournament. SU, sporting a 12-6 conference record, secured the No. 7 seed after Virginia Tech’s win over Virginia and Notre Dame’s victory over Louisville Sunday pushed the Orange down from fifth. Nonetheless, Syracuse enters the tournament looking to make some serious noise before March Madness.
The Orange kick off the postseason Thursday with a matchup against No. 10 seed Cal, which dominated No. 15 seed Wake Forest Wednesday. SU would need to win three more games from there to be crowned conference champions.
Here’s how our beat writers think Syracuse (22-7, 12-6 ACC) will fare in the ACC Tournament:
Jordan Kimball
This is (kind of) the one
Finish: Semifinals
Three months ago, there was no reason to believe Syracuse would be as good as it is right now. Landing Laila Phelia was monumental, but Uche Izoje and Dominique Darius’ rises came out of nowhere. In my last prediction, I was sure SU would fail to back up Felisha Legette-Jack’s preseason claims a championship was reachable.
But all year, Legette-Jack has said this team was the one. I’ll finally take the bait. Kind of. Syracuse is 1-6 in Quad 1 games, yet I’ll be optimistic and assume this squad has overcome those blunders to reach the ACC Tournament Semifinals.
My biggest concern at the start of the season was SU’s lack of depth from 3-point range. There’s been glimpses of inefficiency, but Sophie Burrows is hitting her stride, Phelia can heat up unannounced and Darius and Maddy Potts serve as threats when those two are covered.
And, Izoje has proven time and time again she’s nearly unguardable inside.
With Cal’s victory over Wake Forest in the first round, a rematch of January’s triple-overtime thriller is looming. Syracuse worked its magic with a Darius buzzer-beating 3, and I expect more magic to set SU up to face No. 2 seed Louisville in the quarterfinals.
This is where it gets a bit harder. On Feb. 8, the Orange trailed by as much as 22 points to the Cardinals, and although they cut it to five, they couldn’t emerge victorious. This time, Syracuse will punch first. That loss and a slow start against Pitt four days later served as a wake-up call.
But one Quad 1 win will be enough. North Carolina is a different beast, most recently downing a Duke squad that’s arguably the best in the conference. Syracuse will hang around but fall apart late, ending its ACC Tournament run in the semifinals.
Nevertheless, this is Syracuse’s best chance in recent memory to return to glory. Its run in the conference tournament will be yet another step toward that.
Mauricio Palmar
Have a safe flight
Finish: Quarterfinals
The return has been booked for the night of March 7. Let’s see if Syracuse can beat me here.
I will be covering this team’s run in Duluth alongside my fellow scribe Harris, and thus, I have to book a flight home at some point during the weekend. I decided March 7 was the safest bet possible, since that would be the date of the ACC Semifinals — and I don’t foresee Syracuse making it that far to begin with.
Out of my fellow scribes, I’ve probably been the least bullish on this team all year. Before the season, I predicted, with a fair degree of confidence, for the Orange to go 14-16. I was wrong by a good margin, but it’s understandable.
Phelia was coming off a serious season-ending eye injury, Darius had never been a starter at any point in her career and Izoje was such an enigma that her high school isn’t even listed on her player biography. The question marks were far too plentiful for me to bet on SU to return to March.
But here it is, holding 22 wins heading into this week’s ACC Tournament. The last time I had to predict anything related to this team, the only data I had about this team was a 15-minute scrimmage in the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center against the scout team. I have a much greater sample to base my prediction off of this time around.
And still, I’m just as pessimistic on this team’s outlook as I was before the season. Time and time again, I’ve watched this team crumble against high-level opponents. The Orange have played eight games against an opponent with a Simple Rating Score over 20.0, and they’ve lost seven of them.
Spoiler alert: If Syracuse advances to the quarterfinals, it’ll play Louisville, which sports a 33.22 SRS and shellacked SU in February. This team could certainly force me to eat crow and stomach a rescheduling fee. But something tells me that’s simply not going to happen here.
Harris Pemberton
The Madness begins
Finish: Quarterfinals
After our predictions to start the season, I wouldn’t blame you if you wouldn’t want to believe a thing we say here. But I will humbly gloat that I was the only one who predicted the Orange would have a winning record this year. And boy did they blow those expectations out of the water.
What’s made this Syracuse team so special is that nobody could’ve predicted the magnitude of this turnaround. Izoje’s rise. Phelia’s resurgence. Darius’ breakout. All the pieces have fallen into place for a special season. The Orange have simply taken care of business at just about every turn and are almost certainly going to be in the NCAA Tournament because of it.
But at some point, to be the best, you have to beat the best. And Syracuse just hasn’t done that this season, sitting at 1-6 in Quad 1. So, my prediction is for the Orange to do what they’ve done all year — handle business against lower seeds but fold against the best.
SU’s first round matchup against Cal shouldn’t cause too many problems, although I would certainly be wary of a Golden Bears squad that pushed Syracuse to the brink and beyond when they met in January. The major test lies in the quarterfinals against Louisville, a team that cruised to a 19-point win over the Orange Feb. 8 after taking a 28-6 first-quarter advantage.
The Orange should hope they aren’t on the same 6 a.m. flight to Duluth that Mauricio and I are. Because, in a tournament as quick-paced as the ACC’s, there’s no room to come out tired and sluggish. Syracuse learned that the hard way when they last played the Cardinals. And either way, I just haven’t seen enough from SU to believe they can pull off a stunning upset over a top-15 team.
But maybe they’ll once again prove me wrong. I guess that’s what March is all about.
Photo by Avery Magee | Photo Editor
Published on March 5, 2026 at 12:01 am