Syracuse Basketball: ACC-Big Ten Challenge match-ups remain a mystery
By Ryan Lee
Summer officially is here and Syracuse Basketball still does not have a set schedule. The ACC-Big Ten challenge is still up in the air.
Syracuse Basketball is just around the corner as we officially hit summer. The exact timing with everything is not quite set in stone as years past with the Covid-19 pandemic holding its grip throughout the United States. College athletes have begun training on campuses with several major programs reporting large numbers of positive cases.
Syracuse’s men’s basketball team will return before the end of June to resume their workouts on campus. However, they will not quite know what their schedule looks like as of yet. They can assume what their ACC schedule is, as they usually know who they play on the road, at home, and a home-and-home series with ahead of time. But one big resume-boosting opportunity that remains in question, who will Syracuse play in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge?
Syracuse.com’s Mike Waters explored the options on Monday. Waters broke down the likelihood of each Big Ten team as an opponent. In Waters’ assessment, he pointed out that Syracuse is most likely going to play a Big Ten school on the road this year and most probably a team that played at an ACC school in 2019.
While it is not an absolute guarantee that Syracuse will be on the road, as a team usually pulls double duty at home or the road each year to increase potential match-ups, Waters’ concluded the four most probable outcomes are Syracuse visiting Iowa, Northwestern, Nebraska, and Rutgers.
The first possible outcome is Iowa. Syracuse played them in last year’s match-up at the Carrier Dome. Iowa is projected to be a potential Top 10 team across the country in 2020-21. In Jeff Goodman’s updated preseason Top 50 rereleased Monday, Goodman has Iowa ranked 4th.
The next is the Northwestern Wildcats. These teams only played once in their history with Syracuse winning by 30 in what Waters points out as Jim Boeheim’s senior year. The Wildcats finished the Big Ten slate last year 3-and-17 and only won eight games on the year, finishing only ahead of one team, the next one on the list.
Nebraska, who finished at the bottom of the Big Ten, is another probable match-up. One Waters called an “incredibly unattractive” game. According to Sports Reference, Syracuse and Nebraska have not played each other since they started tracking matchup data in the 1949-50 season. Nebraska only won seven games total in the 2019-20 season and two in Big Ten play.
The final team on the list might be the most intriguing one. Former Big East rival Rutgers. Neither team has played each other since 2013. Fortunes are a bit different for these programs right now as Rutgers is the team that Goodman ranks in the top 25, ranked 14th in fact, while Syracuse did not make his top 50.
Rutgers is the game that probably makes the most sense. Each team has a history together but has not been able to come together since they both left the Big East. It is a short trip relatively for the Orange if they have to go to New Jersey and with the pandemic presumably still around come December when the match-ups normally take place, not making the Orange go to the midwest makes sense.
But what might be best for the Orange is someone like Northwestern or Nebraska. While neither game is impressive it could be their best shot for a win against another Power-5 school. Rutgers and Iowa are set up to be towards the top of one of the best conferences in the country. Syracuse, especially early in the season, would not be set up for success seeing either of those teams on the road.
So will Syracuse play a top Big Ten tier team because of their name recognition? Or will they play a team that is a little more their speed this season? Only time will tell.