Syracuse Basketball: Last few regular season games are now meaningless

Syracuse basketball has absolutely nothing left to play for in the 2019-20 regular season. Here are all the details and what it means.

The Syracuse basketball team doesn’t want to listen, the fans don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth. The last five regular-season games for the Orange are absolutely meaningless.

On Wednesday night at the KFC Yum! Center the last hope for Syracuse to enter the NCAA Tournament via the traditional path died courtesy of the Louisville Cardinals.

There’s no other way to slice it, the Orange blew a golden opportunity to snag its best win of the 2019-20 campaign. Instead, they witnessed its biggest loss of the season in a 24-point drubbing.

Now the Orange are a paltry 14-12 and a woeful 7-8 in ACC play so far this season. In addition to their pathetic standing when you dive deeper it simply gets worse.

Syracuse doesn’t own a top-50 win this season, they’re 4-11 vs quadrant one/two teams this year, and they have nothing positive to take away from its non-conference portion of the schedule. The team currently presides 66th on the NCAA Net Rankings ladder and isn’t mentioned in the Bracket Matrix (which tracks which teams are being considered for the NCAA Tournament).

Syracuse has five regular-season games remaining prior to the ACC Tournament:

"Vs Georgia Tech, (76 percent chance to win), 81 NCAA Net Ranking, inelgible for the NCAA Tournament (per Bracket Matrix).At Pittsburgh, (49.9 percent chance to win), 101 NCAA Net Ranking, doesn’t appear in the Bracket Matrix.Vs North Carolina, (73.3 percent chance to win), 92 NCAA Net Ranking, doesn’t appear in the Bracket Matrix.At Boston College, (68.1 percent chance to win), 143 NCAA Net Ranking, doesn’t appear in the Bracket Matrix.At Miami, (46.1 percent chance to win), 96 NCAA Net Ranking, doesn’t appear in the Bracket Matrix."

Worth noting that prior to Syracuse’s loss to Louisville on Wednesday night they were favored in every game remaining on the schedule per ESPN BPI Analytics.

If Syracuse “wins out” the rest of the regular season they would still be on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament. All of the teams remaining on the schedule stink: they have horrible standing in the NCAA Net Ranking system and none of them are currently projected in the field by any of the major experts.

For Syracuse, there is only one path to March Madness and that’s by winning the ACC Tournament and by virtue earning an automatic ticket to the big dance. Nothing they do in the regular season will change that narrative thus making the final five regular-season games absolutely meaningless as it pertains to their postseason aspirations.