Early Comments on Syracuse 2019-2020 Basketball Schedule

The ACC recently announced the conference basketball schedule for 2019-2020.  The newly vamped 20 game season with the addition of the ACC network has the Orange playing a game in November vs Virginia, and one on the road against Georgia Tech in December.  The rest of the games, as expected, fall into the traditional January through March time frame.

Overall, the schedule is fine.  There are a few things I do not like about the schedule:

Here’s what I don’t like about it:

• We play Notre Dame, Virginia, and Virginia Tech all twice in our first eight games.
• We play five of our last seven games on the road
• No games in NC this year likely means a boatload of games in NC next year.

Since we’ve been in the ACC, he’s how the end of our schedule played out each time:

• 2013-2014 four of last five games on the road
• 2014-2015 three of last four games on the road
• 2015-2016 four of the last six games on the road
• 2016-2017 four of the last seven on the road (though only two of the last five)
• 2017-2018 three of the last five on the road
• 2018-2019 three of the last four on the road
• 2019-2020 five of the last seven on the road

So there is a pattern there that is not very kind to Syracuse, and given a sample set of seven, that is more than a coincidence.

Of course, if we always finish our schedule with more road games than home, then the rest of the schedule will of course feature more home than road games. But come crunch time of the season, every single season, we have to go on the road.