2022–23 Syracuse Men’s Basketball Pre-Season Rankings

While the Syracuse football team is off to a historic start to their season, basketball season quietly looms in the background.

KenPom just released his pre-season hoops ratings, so I thought this would be an apt time to see where the Orange (and the rest of the ACC) are being ranked in a few different pre-season metric systems.

To do this, I combined four popular ranking systems (KenPom, Haslam Metrics, Hoop Explorer, and Bart Torvik) and then just averaged where each team was placed. I’ve also included the ESPN Bracketology projection.

Here’s what it came out to:

A closer look at Syracuse

When you combine the four ranking systems, Syracuse comes in at 10th place for their ACC pre-season ranking and averages out at 72.5 for their national ranking.

For reference, the Orange finished 69th last year in KenPom’s final ranking.

Here’s a closer look at exactly where Syracuse landed with each website:

• Bart Torvik — 10th in the ACC; 81st nationally
• Hoop Explorer — 13th in the ACC; 90th nationally
• HaslamMetrics — 8th in the ACC; 65th nationally
• KenPom — 7th in the ACC; 54th nationally
• ESPN — not one of the last 8 teams out

As you can see pretty clearly, there’s quite the wide-ranging opinion of this year’s Syracuse team.

Couple that in with Jim Boeheim’s very optimistic predictions (namely, that Syracuse will be in the NCAA tournament) and you have a bit of a dissonance.

The ACC Schedule

Here’s a quick look at the ACC schedule, with each team’s composite national ranking in parentheses.

A few notes:

• The Orange open ACC play in one of those weird early matchups — which will be a tough one on the road against Notre Dame
• There next 3 games are favorable — home games vs. Pitt and BC and then at Louisville before it gets real
• It’s a tough January as the Orange, in this order, travel to UVA, host VT, host ND, go to Miami, go to Georgia Tech (for some relief), host UNC, go to VT, and then host UVA. That’s a very compelling 8 game stretch that will have a lot to say about the Orange’s postseason hopes.
• The season wraps up with some winnable games (we all see where this is going, right?) — at BC, at FSU, vs. NC State, vs. Duke (tough one), at Clemson, at Pittsburgh, vs Georgia Tech, vs. Wake Forest

I’ve put my projected wins in bold (11–9 for those keeping score at home):

12/3 at Notre Dame (41)

12/20 vs. Pittsburgh (87)

12/30 vs. Boston College (86)

1/3 at Louisville (90)

1/7 at Virginia (20)

1/11 vs. Virginia Tech (27)

1/14 vs. Notre Dame (41)

1/16 at Miami (30)

1/21 at Georgia Tech (116)

1/24 vs. North Carolina (7)

1/28 at Virginia Tech (27)

1/30 vs. Virginia (20)

2/4 at Boston College (86)

2/8 at Florida State (64)

2/14 vs. NC State (82)

2/18 vs. Duke (10)

2/22 at Clemson (68)

2/25 at Pittsburgh (87)

2/28 vs. Georgia Tech (116)

3/4 vs. Wake Forest (67)

There you have it — a super quick preview for the upcoming season?

Thoughts?

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