Head coach Adrian Autry says the biggest thing that has accounted for Syracuse basketball's struggles this season has been "staying connected as a squad and being able to fight through some adversity."
That's interesting.
As Syracuse basketball wraps up its 2025-26 regular season - at Louisville on Tuesday night and against Pittsburgh at home on Saturday afternoon - the Orange sits at 15-14 overall and 6-10 in Atlantic Coast Conference competition.
Unless the 'Cuse wins next week's ACC Tournament in Charlotte, N.C., Syracuse basketball will miss the annual Big Dance for the fifth straight year. Head coach Adrian Autry is likely to be let go at the end of this campaign. It's a precarious time for a storied program in college basketball.
After going a disappointing 14-19 overall in 2024-25, Autry and his staff were brought back, and there was optimism about this season's roster. Orange coaches retained their two best players from 2024-25, while bringing in a promising six-member transfer class plus a five-member prep cycle that included multiple four-star prospects.
Syracuse basketball is having another subpar season, much like last year.
Yet as the 2025-26 regular season culminates this week, the 'Cuse is one game above .500, and that's even more disappointing that last year's performance, given the talent on this campaign's roster.
So what has gone wrong? Plenty of things. The team's defense, which looked good at the beginning of the season, has been plenty porous of late. Its half-court offense often doesn't have good flow, ball movement or player movement. SU doesn't rebound all that well and shoots just so-so from beyond the arc. Free-throw shooting has been a disaster.
The Orange can't seem to put together two halves of consistently high-quality basketball. Some players seem disinterested at times on the court; energy and effort can be lacking. 'Cuse players, in some games, commit way too many turnovers. Who the team's go-to guy is in crunch time is often unclear.
But the biggest issue? During the Atlantic Coast Conference's weekly conference call among head coaches and reporters this past Monday, Autry said he's disappointed in his team's lack of toughness and poor defense, something that he called his players out for after falling at Wake Forest last Saturday night.
Autry, who is also taking accountability for these problems, said there are a lot of things that the players and coaches could have done better in 2025-26. He added: "I think the biggest thing of doing better is just really staying connected. I think staying connected as a squad and being able to fight through some adversity."
Candidly, this is a bummer to hear. If the Orange's woes this season would boil down to defense, 3-point shooting or something else like that, so be it. But for the team's biggest struggles to center on staying connected as a team and working through tough times together is, from my perspective, unacceptable.
That's on the coaching staff and the players. In any event, Autry said on Monday that he hasn't spoken to anyone within Syracuse Athletics or SU leadership about his future on the Hill. "We’re just really focusing on trying to finish up as good as we can this year," Autry said.