If Syracuse men’s basketball wants to turn its season around, it’ll have to do it quickly. Tuesday’s 81-71 loss to Wake Forest meant the Orange (6-7, 0-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) donned a losing record on New Year's Day for the first time since 1968. According to barttorvik.com’s T-Rank, the Orange have less than a one percent chance to reach the NCAA Tournament.
Saturday, the ’Cuse pays a visit to Florida State (9-4, 0-2 ACC), another of the conference’s once-powerful, now-reeling programs. The Seminoles, like the Orange, have struggled to some narrow wins against inferior competition and, like the Orange, are winless against power conference opponents. Earlier this week, 76-year-old FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton was sued by six former players, who alleged that Hamilton failed to pay promised Name, Image, and Likeness payments.
In a landmark filing, six former FSU basketball players are suing Seminoles coach Leonard Hamilton over $1.5 million in unpaid NIL cash they say he promised them.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 30, 2024
The complaint details a team-wide boycott of a practice last season over the payments.https://t.co/1CFVshawH5
“We haven’t been consistently in sync,” Hamilton said after his team’s 14-point loss to Louisville on December 21.
FSU’s story isn’t an uncommon one in modern college sports. The Seminoles returned just four players from their 2023-24 roster, and filled the holes in their roster with four transfers and five freshmen.
“Even in the games we’ve won, we’re still growing,” Hamilton said. “We definitely need rotation players to make major contributions and, sometimes, that’s not fair.”
Despite the struggles, the ’Noles have still displayed the defining marks of Hamilton’s top-tier teams of the past. FSU leads the ACC in both steals (9.2) and blocks (5.2) per game, neither of which figures to bode well for Syracuse, which has committed a staggering 58 turnovers in its last three contests.
Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry, who throughout his tenure as bench boss has claimed to hang his hat on team defense, will have his hands full preparing the Orange for Seminole Jamir Watkins. The junior averages just under 20 points a game, the second-best mark in the league, and Watkins generates nearly half of that scoring output from his league-best 10 free throws a game.
On the Syracuse side, the Orange are still waiting for consistency from wings Chris Bell — who’s tallied just six points in the last three games — and Elijah Moore — who hasn’t scored since December 21st’s matchup with Maryland — in the absence of star guard JJ Starling. The slow play of Bell and Moore has, however, opened the door for Kyle Cuffe Jr., who, after he played 37 minutes in the team’s first 10 games, has seen 78 minutes in the last three games.
“He doesn’t back down. That’s what resonates with me. That’s who I wanna go to war with. Guys that are gonna be tough,” Autry said of the junior guard, who posted career-highs in points (14) and rebounds (6) in the Wake Forest loss.
2025 is just around the corner and that means one thing: a fresh start. @TylerJAitken and @BurgessLuke03 give their New Year's resolutions for @Cuse_MBB as we turn the calendar.
— WAER Sports Talk (@WAERSportsTalk) December 31, 2024
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Yet, despite the obvious lack of a big win for Florida State, the Seminoles may be the toughest test yet for the Orange’s struggling shooters. Of the ACC’s 18 teams, none holds its opponents to a lower three-point shooting percentage than FSU. Only one team converts from deep at a lower rate than SU.
Tipoff in Tallahassee is slated for 6 p.m. Saturday and action on WAER begins at 5:30 with McClurg Remodeling Countdown to Tipoff.