Amid Oklahoma and Texas recently deciding to bolt the beleaguered Big 12 Conference for the powerhouse Southeastern Conference, realignment talk among the Power 5 leagues is running rampant, and that could affect Syracuse basketball and its Atlantic Coast Conference peers down the road.
Noted college basketball analyst Jay Bilas of ESPN recently floated the possibility of the ACC and the SEC merging into a super league. The ACC could also potentially team up with other Power 5 conferences, according to recent media reports.
For one, ESPN senior writer Adam Rittenberg recently published a piece where he said that the ACC, the Big Ten Conference and the Pac-12 Conference have held “preliminary discussions about forming an alliance.”
Well, well. That would prove interesting for sure. Rittenberg writes that such an alliance is in the early stages of possibly being developed, so we’ll of course continue to monitor this and other conference realignment speculation.
Syracuse basketball could have some intriguing battles in an alliance of Power 5 leagues.
If the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 were to develop an alliance, we’ve got a few ideas about teams in those other conferences with which we’d love to see the Orange play.
In the Big Ten, my top-five duels would be with Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State and Rutgers. Maryland is located in the recruiting-heavy Washington, D.C., and Baltimore markets, where the ‘Cuse grabs a lot of prospects.
Michigan and Michigan State are annually two of the best teams in the Big Ten. The Wolverines are performing well of late on the court, and their recruiting efforts are among the finest across the country in recent years.
The Spartans, meanwhile, are always dangerous come March Madness time. I thoroughly enjoyed when Syracuse basketball upset Michigan State in the round of 32 in the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
The ‘Cuse and Penn State have geographic proximity and a history together, particularly in football. Rutgers, a basketball program on the rise, is a former Big East Conference foe.
Switching over to the Pac-12, and my top-five encounters would be versus Washington (duh), Oregon, Southern California, UCLA and Arizona.
Washington is a no-brainer. Its coach is former long-time ‘Cuse assistant Mike Hopkins. In recent seasons, Oregon is perhaps the Pac-12’s top group, and the Ducks have also snagged several Syracuse basketball recruiting targets of late.
USC and UCLA are in the massive Los Angeles market, so that’s a plus. Southern Cal is doing well in the recruiting arena, while UCLA made the Final Four this past spring.
Arizona is a national brand with a rich tradition in college basketball that has struggled a tad in recent stanzas. But the Wildcats recently hired former Gonzaga assistant coach Tommy Lloyd as their next head coach, which I think is a huge development.
So if an alliance of these three conferences were to transpire, which teams would you like to see the Orange play?