S
yracuse is coming off its most embarrassing loss of the season, a 91-84 defeat to Miami. Prior to Tuesday, Miami had just five wins on the season and one victory in Atlantic Coast Conference play. Though, the Hurricanes made it look easy against SU. The Orange didn’t lead until the second half, but it was a brief advantage. They allowed Miami to shoot 55% from the field and hit 10 3-pointers.
J.J. Starling led the way with 25 points for Syracuse, albeit on an inefficient 8-of-21 shooting performance, while Eddie Lampkin Jr. added 22. Starling and Lampkin’s scoring wasn’t enough as the Orange failed to separate themselves from the bottom three in the ACC standings.
Next up for SU is North Carolina. Despite having a down season, the Tar Heels still present many problems for the Orange, including their potent offense.
Here’s how our beat writers feel Syracuse (11-14, 5-9 ACC) will fare against North Carolina (14-11, 7-6 ACC) Saturday in the JMA Wireless Dome:
Zak Wolf (21-4)
Not this time
Syracuse 78, North Carolina 87
Prior to Syracuse’s outing against Miami, I was extremely tempted to pick the Orange in this one. In the back of my mind, I thought about my good friend Tyler Schiff’s prediction from last season where he picked the Orange to defeat then-No. 7 North Carolina. Nobody believed him, but he didn’t care. UNC isn’t nearly as good this season, so it wasn’t as much of a bold prediction to pick SU. After watching Syracuse play Miami Tuesday, I can’t pick it to win.
The Orange put on one of the most embarrassing defensive displays I’ve seen, allowing Miami to score at will. North Carolina has one of the best offenses in the ACC, 80 points per game, and the Tar Heels will receive little resistance from SU. North Carolina’s three-guard lineup of RJ Davis, Elliot Cadeau and Seth Trimble, along with Drake Powell and Ian Jackson off the bench, will feast. UNC probably saw the way Syracuse defended Miami and laughed.
My original reasoning for possibly picking SU was its advantage in the frontcourt. I felt Lampkin and even Jyáre Davis could take advantage of favorable matchups down low. That’s no longer the case. No person with any logic can pick the Orange in this game after what they saw on Tuesday. It won’t happen this season, but I truly don’t know how many more losses like that Adrian Autry can take before he starts to worry about his job.
Aiden Stepansky (21-4)
Continued spiral
Syracuse 73, North Carolina 80
Wow. Just when I thought Syracuse’s season couldn’t get worse, it fell to the ACC’s bottom feeder in Miami. As Zak said, this was a tempting pick in Syracuse’s favor a few days ago. While a home crowd and no UNC inside presence still make it tempting, I can’t find any excuse to pick Orange after the embarrassment that ensued Tuesday.
The Tar Heels — while losers of five of their last seven games — possess a potent offense with the guard play of Davis, Cadeau and Jackson. For UNC’s standards, this is a down year. However, a bad year for North Carolina still sees it among the upper-echelon of offenses in the conference. Syracuse clearly isn’t a team that can stop anything right now. It might be able to score some points with Lampkin inside, but it won’t be enough.
As I confidently picked the Orange to take down the Hurricanes just a few days ago, I said a Syracuse loss to Miami would be the ultimate embarrassment of the season. I also said that a loss in Florida would make me believe for the first time that Autry’s on the hot seat. Welp, here we are. While I’m not calling for Autry’s job, the noise from the outside is only continuing to heat up. A loss to the Tar Heels won’t help it.
Justin Girshon (19-6)
Standard?
Syracuse 73, North Carolina 77
Every Monday when Autry speaks to the media over Zoom, it’s impossible not to notice the “#OrangeStandard” phrase written in his office. It’s what he preached he’d work to get SU back to. Yet in year two, the Orange have continuously crept away from the “Orange Standard.”
Tuesday’s loss to Miami was another painful reminder. In what hypothetically should’ve been a walk in the park for Syracuse facing the worst team in the conference, it entered the game as a betting underdog. I was honestly appalled. But the Orange showed throughout why they weren’t expected.
As my fellow beat writers have pointed out, North Carolina isn’t the North Carolina we expected it to be entering the year. However, UNC doesn’t need to be a blue blood to beat this iteration of SU. It just needs to not play like it’s one of the worst teams in the country — which it’s more than capable of even with an underachieving roster.
This all begs a question for me: what is Syracuse’s standard? The standard should be competing with the blue blood programs. Maybe just a close game against a middling Tar Heels squad would be deemed a success for the Orange.
Photograph by Leonardo Eriman | Asst. Video Editor
Published on February 13, 2025 at 12:06 am
