Syracuse Orange men’s basketball: not named in ESPN’s early bracketology

For the Syracuse Orange, making the NCAA Tournament in 2025-26 is a clear expectation after missing it the last four years. But a new, notable projection has no mention of Syracuse in the conversation.

ESPN’s latest bracketology has Syracuse absent from its postseason forecast. Syracuse last made the tournament during the 2020-21 season, when it reached the Sweet Sixteen. Among the Power 4 conference, the ACC projects to get the fewest number of teams in the tournament (six). The SEC leads all conferences with 14, followed by the Big Ten with 11 and Big 12 with eight.

For the ACC, Duke projects to be a one-seed right now. There’s then a tier that includes Louisville (five-seed), North Carolina (six-seed) and NC State (seven-seed), followed by another tier of four ACC teams who are on the tournament bubble: Miami (Last Four In), SMU (Last Four In), Clemson (Next Four Out) and Virginia (Next Four Out).

In its ACC schedule, Syracuse will play UNC twice (home-and-home) and get three of those bubble teams (Clemson, Miami and SMU) at home. Duke, Louisville, NC State and Virginia will all be road games for the Orange.

To get in the conversation, Syracuse will be banking on the duo of guard J.J. Starling and forward Donnie Freeman, who headline the 2025-26 roster. Starling and Freeman are the only two players who are returning from the 2024-25 team. The 11 newcomers include six transfer portal additions, led by former Georgia Tech guard Naithan George and former Oregon State guard Nate Kingz. Former Cincinnati forward Tyler Betsey, former UCLA Center William Kyle, former Georgia Tech center Ibrahim Souare and former Montana State guard Bryce Zephir make up the rest of the transfers.

The rest of the new faces are part of Syracuse’s incoming recruitment class that 247Sports has ranked 17th overall and sixth in the ACC. That group includes four-star guards Kiyan Anthony and Luke Fennell, four-star forward Sadiq White Jr., three-star forward Aaron Womack and three-star center Tiefing Diawara, Syracuse’s most recent addition to the roster.

Syracuse will also be banking on how it built its non-conference schedule to reflect better in the metrics and diversify its overall tournament resume. The current out-of-conference slate is headlined by two guaranteed Q1 games in Las Vegas and a Q1 SEC opponent at home. All but one of its remaining OOC games are against Q4 opponents in what is a very home-heavy slate.

Coach Adrian Autry will be entering his third season at helm for the Orange. He is 34-31 overall across two years, with a 20-win season in year one followed by a 14-19 campaign in year two. Syracuse has a roster built in his image, a promising recruitment class, two foundational veterans from the previous year and a more smartly-designed schedule. All that said, that will have to translate to the court, where the Orange hope to break their tournament dry spell this year.