MLAX : Syracuse to travel to No. 3 Duke in NCAA tournament 1st round
Syracuse will face No. 3 Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament in Durham, N.C., on Saturday.
The game is a rematch of the Big City Classic on April 1, when Duke defeated Syracuse 12-10.
The Orange (9-7) earned an automatic bid to the tournament after winning the Big East tournament championship on Saturday. SU struggled to a 7-7 record during the regular season that included just one win over a ranked opponent, then-No. 10 Princeton, and went into the postseason on the NCAA tournament bubble. But the Orange played arguably its two best games of the season to defeat Villanova, 15-6, and St. John’s, 12-4, in the conference tournament.
Syracuse will be making its fifth straight NCAA tournament appearance.
Duke (13-4) boasts an impressive resume with wins over top-10 opponents North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. The Blue Devils won the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
Duke was rewarded with a home game at Koskinen Stadium at noon on Saturday against the Orange.
Loyola (14-1) received the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament. Johns Hopkins, Duke, Notre Dame, Virginia, Massachusetts, and North Carolina round out the top eight seeds in the 16-team tournament. No. 6 UMass is the only undefeated team in the field.
In each of the last four seasons, the Orange was a top-three seed and won two national championships in 2008 and 2009. But in Syracuse’s trips the last two years, the team was upset in the first round and quarterfinals, respectively.
