There’s a lot of opponents that may be considered rivals for Syracuse Men’s Basketball. Georgetown. Boston College. Tennessee?
Ok, the last one may be a little bit of a stretch. But once again, the Orange will be taking on the Volunteers during the 2025-26 season, this time as part of the ACC-SEC challenge.
That now marks three straight years that Syracuse and Tennessee have met. And well…the last couple of results have not been super friendly for SU. A year ago, Syracuse fell to a top-five Tennessee team 96-70. While the season hadn’t been extremely impressive up until that point, the nearly 30 point loss signaled that it wasn’t going to be a great season for SU.
And how about two years ago? Well it wasn’t much better. In SU’s opening game of the Maui Invitational, the Orange lost to the #7 Volunteers 73-56.
Two years. Two blowout losses. And now another matchup. Sigh.
Of course, it’s not really Syracuse’s fault. They don’t choose invitational matchups or inter-conference matchups, but this really is turning into an unfortunate trend for Syracuse.
Now, we can look at this as a half-glass full opportunity for the Orange. Syracuse, once again, will be playing a Tennessee team that could be highly ranked. And a win would almost certainly give Syracuse a Q1 win that looks good to the selection committee in March. Those words may sound like perfection to an SU fan.
But realistically, SU hasn’t been anywhere near Tennessee’s level in the past couple of seasons. There’s a lot of hope with this year’s freshman class. This matchup though will be early in the season, meaning the team may not be fully gelled.
Hopefully the Orange can prove this pessimistic writer wrong. But another blowout loss may very well be on the horizon to Tennessee.
