Syracuse Basketball: Battle for the ACC title could prove wild and wacky

Syracuse basketball has work to do but could contend for a top-four ACC finish given the league’s topsy-turvy start.

The 2020-21 campaign is still in its infancy for Syracuse basketball and its Atlantic Coast Conference peers, but already results within the league suggest that the conference could be somewhat wide open this stanza.

Duke hasn’t looked like, well, Duke. Virginia, picked as the favorite to win the ACC according to the league’s pre-season media poll, already has suffered a stunning loss.

North Carolina is better than in 2019-20 but has had its shares of struggles. Virginia Tech owns a strong success over highly rated Villanova and knocked off previously undefeated Clemson earlier this week.

Perhaps it’s Florida State and Louisville that are the teams to beat in the ACC at this juncture. Pittsburgh is off to a nice beginning, while Georgia Tech was under .500 before suiting up on Friday night.

Of course, a lot of basketball remains left on the calendar, and games unfortunately will likely continue to get canceled amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The ACC was primed for only four or five bids to March Madness this past spring, and the conference absolutely should receive way more invites to the 2021 NCAA Tournament.

Yet, as league play ensues in full force in the coming weeks, will one or two squads separate themselves from the pack, or is the ACC looking at seven, eight or nine berths in the Big Dance, but no truly dominant teams that will be considered front-runners to cut down the nets in early April?

Syracuse basketball has a chance to stay in the upper tier of a wide-open ACC.

CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein recently wrote that the ACC “has more questions than many think.”

He noted Duke’s early season struggles. The Cavaliers, meanwhile, said in a press release that they planned to return to practice on Dec. 19 after pausing all hoops-related activities on Dec. 9 “due to COVID-19 issues within their program.”

Wrote Rothstein, “The blue blood programs in this conference have not looked like blue blood programs out of the gate. That could open the door for other programs …”

Heck, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, in an updated bracketology from Dec. 15, had nine ACC crews in his mock field of 68, but the best seeds were No. 4 seeds UVA and FSU.

"In a recent column, Rivals.com national analyst Rob Cassidy predicted that the Seminoles will capture the ACC crown. He wrote in part, “Let’s take a foray into reactions based on tiny sample sizes and handicap the messy ACC, shall we? Duke appears to be … uhhh .. let’s say ‘a work in progress.’ North Carolina is certainly improved from a year ago but still seems to be nothing resembling a powerhouse. Louisville has been impressive but far from hyper-imposing. So while undefeated Florida State has certainly looked flawed for stretches, it has the feel of a team that could be a couple weeks away from hitting an impressive stride.”"

Prior to 2020-21 commencing, I felt that FSU would have a great opportunity to repeat as the conference’s regular-season champion. I’m not going to prognosticate so far in declaring that the Orange will claim the league’s grand prize, but in what appears to be an intriguing and difficult-to-predict year for the ACC, stranger things could happen.