Can Syracuse achieve their goal and return to the NCAA Tournament

Syracuse enters the 2025-2026 season in a tough spot. With an almost completely overhauled roster, Adrian Autry has to try to meld a cohesive team out of these new parts quickly.

The talent is there, though, as returnees Donnie Freeman and J.J. Starling are joined by five transfers from major conference teams and a pair of top-35 recruits. Five players have high-level starting experience under their belts and two transfers who were not starters were rotation players last season.

The middle of college basketball is big and Syracuse is right in it

The sticking point is this assemblage of talent has the Orange projected to be a middle of the pack power conference team. KenPom ranks SU at #68 in the nation coming into the season, which places them 10th among ACC teams, whose 8th- to 14th-best teams are all clustered between #59 and #77 in the country.

T-Rank views Syracuse similarly, listing them slightly higher at #61 in the country and 9th in the ACC. The Orange are in a tightly-wrapped ball of ACC teams in these projections, also, as the range of #51 to #75 features the teams ranked between 6th and 13th in the conference.

The ACC beat writers are right there, too. In the preseason media day voting, Syracuse ended up finishing 9th, which was also in a snug group expected to finish between 7th and 10th.

The bottom line is the Orange are going to need to outperform those expectations to return to the NCAA Tournament.

The Orange need to turn around the big shortcoming they have shown

Far too often in the two contests, SU’s defensive intensity and effort were lacking. In the first exhibition game, they held a comfy 12-point lead until just over five minutes remained and Buffalo made six straight shots, including five 3-pointers, to pull within four. The Orange were fortunate to have scored enough to hang on until the Bulls cooled off.

In the second game, Pace led by a single point with a little over 13 minutes remaining before Syracuse forced them into nine turnovers and 5-for-16 shooting the rest of the way, including a stretch of over seven minutes without a field goal. That allowed SU to put away an outclassed opponent.

However, much of what has been written and said about this team is that their success will come down to their defense. In playing a couple teams they should have been able to control, the Orange simply did not do that.

They clearly have the offensive capability to flourish as seven players scored at least nine points in one or both of the games while returning leading scorer J.J. Starling did not reach that mark in either game. However, Buffalo and Pace combined to shoot 43.9 percent from the field, a mark that was just about average last season.

The big picture of the NCAA Tournament and the teams that get invited

Last season, six teams in the KenPom top 50 failed to get an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament, the highest-rated finishing at #37. And the worst adjusted defensive efficiency at KenPom among the top 36 who got in was BYU’s #82 ranking, which was offset by their 9th-best offense in the country.

KenPom likes all that the offensive talent of the Orange, but only enough to rank them 49th on the season on that end. That likely will not carry what they see right now as the #100 defense to the tournament.

SU will almost certainly need to get one, if not two, upsets in both non-conference and ACC play. That means at least one win coming against Houston, Kansas, Tennessee, and the unknown opponent in the Players’ Era Men’s Championship. In conference play, Duke, Louisville, and North Carolina are the big names.

From what the Orange have shown this year, they have to become an offensive force to return to the NCAA Tournament. While they have enough to score a lot of points, it certainly would be easier to reach that goal if they just played better defense.

The Orange will get themselves back on the bubble and finish with around 20 wins, but that will not be enough to make March mad, just disappointing.

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