Syracuse Basketball: In 2022-23 ACC rankings, SU hovers toward bottom

Syracuse basketball, a season ago, endured its first campaign under .500 in head coach Jim Boeheim’s 46 years guiding the Orange.

As we look ahead to the 2022-23 stanza, the ‘Cuse will have a vastly different roster comprised of several core returnees along with a bunch of incoming freshmen and a big-man transfer to round out Boeheim’s line-up.

I fully acknowledge that these sorts of projections for 2022-23 at this juncture are ridiculously early, but the statistical Web site barttorvik.com isn’t presently predicting all that rosy of an outlook for the Orange, at least for the time being.

The long and short is that within the Atlantic Coast Conference for the upcoming term, this Web site places Syracuse basketball in the league’s bottom-third. Yuck.

A statistics Web site predicts another losing season for Syracuse basketball.

The Orange is situated at No. 80 across the country, according to barttorvik.com, which predicts a 15-16 overall record for the ‘Cuse in 2022-23 to go along with a 9-11 mark in ACC competition.

In the conference power rankings, barttorvik.com has Syracuse basketball at No. 11 out of the 15-member league, just ahead of Louisville and directly behind Boston College.

Duke, unsurprisingly given its loaded 2022 recruiting class, sits at No. 1, followed by 2022 NCAA Tournament runner-up North Carolina, Virginia, Miami, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, Clemson, Florida State, N.C. State, Boston College, Syracuse basketball, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Pittsburgh.

The Blue Devils (No. 4), the Tar Heels (No. 6), the Cavaliers (No. 17) and the Hurricanes (No. 23) are all rated in the top-25 nationally, per barttorvik.com.

Kevin Flaherty, a national writer with 247Sports, noted these ACC power ratings from barttorvik.com in a recent article that he published.

"In his story, when discussing the Orange, Flaherty wrote in part, “This is a strange Syracuse roster, one that has three likely senior starts, and yet a huge part of the roster coming from a six-man freshman class that includes three four-star players. Simply put, for this team to find success, the returning players need to be the best versions of themselves.”"

I totally agree that the ‘Cuse veterans will have to produce in a big-time way for Syracuse basketball to have a good season in 2022-23. But to label the Orange roster as “strange”? I’ll have to respectfully disagree with that characterization.