Syracuse basketball's ACC pairings announced for upcoming season

The ACC has a numbers problem with 18 basketball teams playing an 18 game conference schedule. It results in each team playing two games against two teams each season, one game against 14 teams, and zero games against one of the 17 other league teams each year to fill out the regular season slate.

Unbalanced to say the least.

When the league announced the 2026-27 season pairings on Thursday, Syracuse is back with its annual home-and-home meetings with permanent rival Pitt, and for the upcoming season, after not playing Stanford at all last year, the Orange and Cardinal will also play two regular season games, and the one at home will be Stanford's Dome debut.

The odd team out for Syracuse in the upcoming season is North Carolina State, after playing and falling to the Wolfpack in Raleigh last season.

Are two games against Stanford really necessary?

Well, perhaps Stanford is the wrong example, but with the teams not playing last season in the Dome, and the Orange having a road game due at Cal, it made Stanford the easy choice for the ACC to fill in as a double opponent.

After all, it would not make sense for the Cardinal to have played three seasons in the league without having ever ventured onto Jim Boeheim Court, just as much as it would not make sense for SU to travel all the way to the Bay Area and only play Cal.

But it also makes no sense not to play N.C. State in the Dome (this season), or for that matter, for any team not to play a fellow conference member in basketball that beginning this season features a maximum 32-game regular season allotment.

Swap out N.C. State in the Dome for Stanford, and simply have the Cardinal come to Syracuse next year when it is easier to pair up with another Eastern team for a multi-game road trip.

The ACC regular season will again begin in late December

After dropping from 20 to 18 regular season games last season, the conference gave up on using the first weekend in December to get conference play started, before a several week gap. The upcoming season will continue to begin in late December, running through the first Saturday in March.

In year one of the Gerry McNamara era, the Orange big ACC Dome games will include Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, and Virginia.

The Orange have hosted Duke eight times since joining the ACC for the 2013-14 season, and seven of those eight contests have drawn crowds of 30,000 plus and were the largest on-campus crowd of that particular college hoops season.

Ironically, Syracuse has no regular season games in the ACC's home state of North Carolina upcoming, with the ACC Tournament on a one year move from Charlotte to Greensboro for 2027.

SUPPORT THE JUICE ONLINE

Follow us on Twitter @TheJuiceOnline, like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram @SUJuiceOnline and listen to our podcast.

Add us as a preferred source on Google