Syracuse Orange women’s basketball is 18-4 and 8-3 in the ACC after defeating Miami on the road 65-60 on Sunday. SU was picked to finish 13th in the ACC, and is one of the biggest surprises of the women’s college basketball season, even if it is still a ways away from the top tier of the sport.
Here are four key trends that define the Orange’s season.
Interior dominance
If there’s one thing about Felisha Legette-Jack’s teams, you know that they are going to go hard on the glass and in the paint. Syracuse has the fourth best offensive rebounding rate in the country, a rate that ranks two spots higher than the 2024 team that won 24 games and made the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Obviously, this team doesn’t have Dyaisha Fair, but this team does have a better defensive unit, holding opponents to just 41.9% inside the arc, a top 50 rate in the country. Syracuse generates much of its offense inside the arc, and runs teams off the three-point line on the other end, trying to funnel them towards the shot blockers in the paint.
That’s how the math ends up working out to Syracuse attempting 53 more shots than opponents in ACC play.
Sophie Burrows’ shooting percentage
One of the biggest bright spots for last year’s disappointing season was the emergence of Sophie Burrows as a legitimate second option to Georgia Woolley. She shot 39% from three and averaged over 12 points per game. That led into her being the presumed top player for SU coming into the year.
She has not been, but she has been playing much better basketball over the last month since ACC play started. Syracuse didn’t play a difficult out-of-conference schedule, so while finishing 10-1 was impressive, it still hadn’t been tested much. Burrows finding her shot has been a major reason for why the Orange have passed a few tests in the conference.
Her best game of the season before winter break was the one early December conference matchup with SMU, where she made five threes. She has made multiple threes in six of Syracuse’s ten conference games since then, and the Orange are 6-0 in those six games. Burrows is averaging 13.5 points per game in league play while shooting 40% from three on seven attempts per game.
In non-conference play, she shot just 9-for-49 from beyond the arc.
Wins above bubble
The NET and Bart Torvik numbers still lag behind the record, but Syracuse’s resume metrics are where you would expect them to be. At 18-4, the Orange are 27th in wins above bubble at +2.71. Wins above bubble is calculated by assigning a value to each game based on the probability that a theoretical average bubble team would have to win that game based on location and opponent.
SU’s win over Virginia on the road added 0.7 wins above bubble, as the average bubble team would only be projected to win that game 30% of the time. Meanwhile, the most recent win, over Miami, accounted for about 0.5 wins above bubble. But this goes the other way as well, as losing to Virginia Tech lost SU 0.5 wins above bubble.
Big opportunities await, with at least 0.8 WAB at stake against Louisville, Notre Dame, and N.C. State. But Syracuse could also lose over 0.9 WAB in a single game if it doesn’t take care of business against Boston College or Pittsburgh.
The WAB is on the NCAA’s team sheet, and will help Syracuse’s NCAA Tournament resume. If the bracket were based on WAB (something that I wouldn’t mind), SU would be a 7 seed.
Uche Izoje
Back to the first point, Syracuse’s ability to control the paint in most games has come down to star freshman Uche Izoje, who has been so statistically impressive that she deserves her own section of this story. However, there are some notable red flags to keep an eye on.
Starting with the good. Izoje is second nationally among all freshmen in double-doubles with 10. She and Kentucky’s Clara Strack are the only two players in the country averaging 14 points, nine rebounds, and two blocks. She’s scoring 9.7 points per game at the rim, which ranks third in the ACC behind Hannah Hidalgo and Toby Fournier, and she’s doing it while shooting 61.7% on rim attempts. Syracuse has the type of player that you can just throw the ball in the paint to, and you expect a basket.
However, her level of play has dipped against the best competition on SU’s schedule. In seven games against top 50 opponents, her offensive rating is just 91.0, 15 points lower than her overall offensive rating. Her rebounding rates, block rates, and efficiency go down drastically in those games. It’s one of the main reasons why Burrows finding her shot again has been so important throughout ACC play.