Syracuse, N.Y. – The Syracuse men’s basketball team has started the season with four consecutive wins against a schedule that is the basketball version of the kiddie pool.
The Orange will dive headfirst into the deep end next week with three games against high-level competition in the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas.
In building a 4-0 record, Syracuse has played a schedule that is ranked 361st in the nation. That’s out of 365 Division I teams.
The Orange blew out Binghamton, Delaware State and Drexel by an average of 36.0 points before struggling to put away Monmouth, 78-73, on Tuesday. The highest KenPom.com ranking for those four is Monmouth at No. 212.
Of the 18 teams competing in the Players Era Festival, all 18 are ranked in KenPom’s Top 100. A dozen are in the Top 50.
Syracuse will begin play in the event on Monday against Houston, which was ranked No. 2 in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll.
After playing Houston on Monday, Syracuse will get No. 24 Kansas on Tuesday. The rest of the field includes seven more teams ranked in the AP poll.
Welcome to the deep end.
It’s a challenge that Syracuse coach Adrian Autry purposefully set for his team. In an interview at SU’s media day in October, Autry said he wants to be in tournaments like the Players Era to re-establish the SU program on the national landscape.
“We knew that the Players Era tournament was a big tournament,’’ Autry said. “No one has easy games there. Everyone’s going to be challenged.
“If we weren’t in that tournament, then it’s like, ‘Oh, Syracuse can’t get into that tournament’,” Autry continued. “It’s great for us to be involved in those tournaments.’’
The question is: Is Syracuse ready to swim with the big fish?
“Obviously, it’s different, you know, playing these mid-major D1s to go into top-25 teams,’’ SU freshman Kiyan Anthony said after Tuesday’s nerve-jangling win over Monmouth. “But the mindset stays the same. Just stick to the work that we do. Stick to the stuff Coach (Autry) puts in. Stick to the defensive mindset and I feel like we will be good.’’
Still, it’s a drastic change to go from the Binghamton Bearcats to the Houston Cougars.
Under coach Kelvin Sampson, Houston has won at least 30 games in each of the last four seasons. The Cougars lost to Florida in last year’s national championship game.
Syracuse hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2021, and the Orange’s run in the tournament that year ended with a 62-46 loss to Houston.
Even though the win over Monmouth probably made a lot of Syracuse fans a bit uneasy, the game might have done more to prepare the Orange for its trip to Vegas than the two exhibitions and first three games on the schedule.
“I think we’re ready,’’ SU guard Nate Kingz said. “You obviously can’t just flip a switch and turn it on. We’ve got to go hard these next few days in practice and really work on our defense and boxing out and getting rebounds.’’
Much is riding on the Orange’s upcoming slate – the three games in Las Vegas and then immediately upon returning home, a game against Tennessee on Tuesday, Dec. 3 at the JMA Wireless Dome.
Those four games are the only ones against teams ranked in KenPom’s Top 100 on Syracuse’s non-conference schedule. If Syracuse can’t win at least one of these next four games, the odds of the Orange ending its NCAA Tournament drought get longer.
“People don’t think we can go and win those games, right?’’ Autry said back in October. “That’s what it is, right? That’s fine. That’s fine.
“But I don’t think that that’s pressure,’’ Autry added. “You got to play these games to win these games. So now we got to go there and we got to compete. We got to play well and we got to win.”
