Despite getting absolutely smoked over the weekend, the Syracuse Orange remain in decent shape to make the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years under coach Felisha Legette-Jack’s tenure.
While plenty of time remains in the season, it isn’t too early to start campaigning for the program’s leader to take home the conference’s top honor among coaches.
Legette-Jack previously won the ACC Coach of the Year award in 2023-24. In that season, Syracuse finished 24-8 overall, 13-5 against the ACC and
earned a six-seed in March Madness. Leading up to 23-24, the ACC’s Blue Ribbon Panel picked the Orange to finish ninth in the conference. It ended the year third in the ACC standings.
Fast forward to now, and five more games remain in 2025-26 for the Orange heading into the conference tournament. That said, the playbook for FLJ to come away with the award again is quite similar, and arguably more impressive this time around.
Syracuse will enter this week with a 19-5 overall record and 9-4 record against the ACC, half a game back of UNC for the four-spot in the conference standings. Compared to the 2023-24 team, the 2025-26 have played at a lower ceiling and have a weaker resume.
But, keep in mind that in this most recent preseason, the ACC’s media panel picked the Orange to finish 13th. If the season were to end today, Syracuse would be eight spots higher compared to where it was projected.
Looking at the entire ACC, ‘Cuse is once again outperforming the preseason consensus, and it’s not even close:
Over half the conference (including Syracuse) is either playing at or better than preseason expectations, using the data from the ACC media voting. Only one team is even more spots higher than what was initially expected. For many in this group: the prediction mostly matched the expectation, give or take a few spots. For Syracuse, it is out of this world.
Ditto for any bracketology projection from then to now: Syracuse has essentially leaped from bottom-five team expectation in its own conference to one of the better seeds the ACC is expected to land in the NCAA Tournament.
And arguably, this time around was “tougher” for FLJ compared to the 2023-24 campaign.
During that season, Legette-Jack mostly had the core from the 2022-23 season, her first with the Orange. The team only bumped out four wins overall, but the notable difference between 22-23 and 23-24 was a plus-four jump in wins against the ACC and definitely more higher-quality victories.
Syracuse last season finished six games below-.500 and went 6-12 in conference play. The improvement from year to year is certainly a difference.
Plus, remember this is happening with an almost entirely-new roster.
Only seven players from the 24-25 team are on the 25-26 Orange. Sophie Burrows remains the only returning Syracuse player who is currently averaging more than 10 points. Part of this argument is more offseason-focused, but incorporating multiple transfer portal gambles (namely Laila Phelia and Dominique Darius) has led to a big pay off this year. Ditto for finding Uche Izoje, who is one of the best centers in the conference, and is just a freshman.
The key isn’t about flexing on finding those names and bringing them in. It’s also using them in the right way and entering the year without some certainly, like there was in 2023-24. It was clear at the time, Dyaisha Fair would remain the go-to scorer and the supporting cast (Alaina Rice, Georgia Woolley, Kyra Wood, etc.) had clear roles.
For this current team, there were a lot of question marks heading in. Ditto for how much uncertainty there was. That’s probably why the team was picked to finish so low in the first place. Huge props there to FLJ for navigating that, and potentially doing so without the adequate resources compared to the rest of the conference or even the rest of the field.
Taking off the orange-tinted glasses, will she actually come away with the award? Probably not, especially if Duke stays perfect in conference play. Kara Lawson has the Blue Devils on a total roll. The same could be said for Jeff Walz at Louisville, who is currently the ACC’s highest-projected seed in tournament projections.
But, there’s one final dart to throw at the board in support of FLJ. For Duke, its outcome was highly expected. For Louisville, this was largely the expectation.
For Syracuse, it was not… and by a long shot.
