The ball is tipped… and there you are not.
The Syracuse Orange men’s basketball team suffered another crushing defeat on Saturday, falling to the North Carolina Tar Heels inside the JMA Wireless Dome. The loss brings Syracuse’s record to 11-15 on the season and 5-10 in ACC play. Barring a miracle, Syracuse will miss the NCAA Tournament for the fourth consecutive season.
The 2024-25 season will go down as Syracuse’s worst season since having a conference affiliation. The last time Syracuse was down this bad was in Roy Danforth’s first season as head coach when the team finished 9-16 during the 1968-69 season. Syracuse was an independent program.
A disengaged fan base trends from frustration toward indifference. Apathy grows. Those with hope remaining have turned their eyes toward next season. At this point, all that seems left to play for is a chance to make the ACC Tournament. In the 18-member league, 15 teams qualify for the conference tournament this season. The bottom three teams will be left out.
When asked about making the ACC Tournament following the loss to North Carolina, Autry demurred.
“We just try to win the next game. We don’t get too ahead of ourselves,” Autry said. “Prepare each game and when it’s over with we’ll deal with that. But we’re going to go ahead tomorrow, get ourselves ready. You know, we’ll review the tape. I’ll figure out what I need to do better, what the coaching staff needs to do better, what everyone needs to do better and put the work in and get ready to prepare to go to Pittsburgh.”
In the loss to North Carolina, Syracuse players talked about the need to come up with plays in the game’s important moments. The Orange trailed by as many as 11 and came back to tie the game in the second half. North Carolina went back up ten and Syracuse once again trimmed the lead down to two in the game’s final moments, only for Elliot Cadeau to drive to the rim late without much resistance and score. A confused Syracuse team showed 2-3 zone during that sequence, only to hastily match up in man resulting in the Cadeau layup. A quick three on the other end by Syracuse went awry that all but eliminated a chance to edge North Carolina.
In the post-game locker room, Eddie Lampkin — who usually stands during interviews — elected for a chair. He greeted reporters with his head down, speaking in hushed tones.
“It’s really not coaching,” Lampkin said. “It’s mainly on us, small things. I mean I turned the ball over at the end a little bit. I should’ve been way more aggressive.”
Lampkin, who has been on a tear of late with three consecutive double-doubles, said he’d trade his production and gladly finish with two points on the game if it meant winning. But Syracuse still seems unable to touch ground with exactly what it needs to do to come out on the right side of these games.
“We just need to figure out what we need to do for these last five and try to get into post-season,” Lampkin said.
Photo by Rich Barnes/Getty Images
The message the coaching staff delivered post-game included appeals for the team to be tougher in crunch time. Perhaps a more connected group would change the end of game results.
“As players, we’ve got to do a better job of playing better at crucial times, getting rebounds, not turning the ball over and coming up with big stops,” Jaquan Carlos said. “We don’t want to be a moral victory team. There’s things we did good but also a lot of things we got to work on.”
There’s not much time left to work on things, though, as Syracuse has just five ACC games remaining. The Orange currently sit tied for 14th in the conference with Cal, a game and a half up on the 16th-place team NC State. The bottom three ACC teams will see their season end after their final conference regular-season game.
In a year where Syracuse lost its best player for seven games (Starling with a broken wrist) and its best professional prospect from the beginning of ACC play (Freeman with a foot injury), this has the makings of a lost season. Syracuse, reluctant to identify and adapt to the rapidly advancing college sports landscape, has been fiscally challenged in NIL resources.
Coming into the 2024-25 season Syracuse’s NIL pool was middle of the pack in the ACC with a reported valuation of $2 million (per syracuse.com), whereas SEC programs boast NIL pools as large as $4-5 million for men’s basketball. It’s no secret why the SEC is having its best basketball season ever as by far and away the most powerful basketball league in the sport.
Without a GM this past season, the Syracuse staff brought players out of the transfer portal that aspired to play up a level. What was assembled was a team of one-way players resulting in Syracuse’s worst basketball season in over 50 years. The once proud program has struggled to compete in the modern era of college sports where there’s a direct correlation between dollars spent an on-court success.
The challenges for Syracuse have proved too much to bear. More changes are coming. As part of the House v. NCAA proposed settlement, schools will be allowed to share athletic department revenue with athletes beginning in 2025-26, so long as Claudia Wilken, the Senior District Judge of the Northern District of California, passes the terms of the settlement.
While not finalized, under the proposed revenue sharing model, NCAA Division I schools will be allowed to make payments directly to their athletes up to a tentative annual revenue sharing cap of $20.5 million per school. The cap is estimated to grow 4% each year to around $30 million per year over the next ten years with most experts believing 90% revenue share will be allocated to football and men’s basketball. NIL and collectives will still play an important factor going forward.
With more adjustments coming and Syracuse bracing to adapt to the ever-changing college sports landscape, the question for this season is what left is still worth playing for? Sitting under .500 on the year, the focus seems to shift to next year. Retaining JJ Starling and Donnie Freeman will be top priority along with acquiring a top point guard and center out of the transfer portal. A top incoming recruiting class, headlined by Sadiq White and Kiyan Anthony, give hope that there’s still time for Autry to right the ship in what will be a pivotal make-or-break 2025-26 season.
For now, there is predicted and understandable coach-speak in the form of the one-game-at-a-time mentality. And sure, there’s always a chance at making a run in the ACC Tournament. But is anybody really beating Duke and their roster bolstered by the Iron Dukes war chest? At this point, a shot in the ACC Tournament and perhaps individual pride might be all that’s left for Syracuse.
“These could be my last five games in college basketball. So I feel like for me I just want to win and get into post-season,” Lampkin said. “I feel like the team wants to win too we just need figure out what we need to do to win the game.”
That goes for the game on the court, as well as the game that’s being played off the court, too.