Neil Adler, contributor (20-11)
The Syracuse basketball squad has only one way to reach March Madness, and that’s by winning the Atlantic Coast Conference post-season tournament. No easy feat for the Orange, the No. 6 seed in the league event, and the ‘Cuse, unfortunately, gets a rough match-up in Wednesday night’s second-round clash.
Syracuse (17-14, 10-10) will do battle with the No. 14 seed, North Carolina (14-18, 6-14), a crew that crushed No. 11 seed Virginia Tech by 22 points on Tuesday evening in a first-round affair. The Orange and the Tar Heels will meet beginning at around 9:30 pm from the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C., with ESPN2 providing television coverage.
UNC has owned the ‘Cuse in recent years, capturing nine-consecutive encounters, including a 92-79 triumph versus Syracuse at the Carrier Dome on Feb. 29. During that game, the Tar Heels connected on a whopping 51.6 percent from the field, 42.3 percent from beyond the arc and 88.2 percent from the charity stripe. Historically, North Carolina is a terrific team at scoring in the paint and dominating on the glass, and those facets held true a few weeks ago.
However, if the Tar Heels again shoot at such a high clip from deep, something that they didn’t do for much of the 2019-20 campaign, it will prove nearly impossible for the Orange to succeed. The ‘Cuse itself has to find its range from 3-point land, as Syracuse has really struggled of late with the long ball. Additionally, the Orange must contain UNC’s offensive-rebounding prowess to limit second-chance scoring opportunities for the Tar Heels.
Since Syracuse is the better seed here, ESPN’s Basketball Power Index pegs the Orange as the slight favorite to prevail, at 53.1 percent. I wish that I possessed the same optimism, but I foresee North Carolina picking up an 84-78 victory and relegating the ‘Cuse to a potential NIT berth.