Syracuse Coach After 53-Point Loss: Please Don’t Make Us Play UConn Again

I’ve never been to Connecticut except to pass through it, so I personally can’t speak to how hospitable it is to visitors. But Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack would be happy if she never saw another Nutmegger for the rest of her life.

“For us to continue to come to Connecticut year after year after year is, to me, it’s a personal attack,” Legette-Jack said after her Orange lost, 98-45, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Monday. That was just one line of many in her press conference/vent session that all but begged the selection committee to stop grouping early-round teams by region and give Syracuse some other top program’s home court to lose on.

“To have to come and be in this particular bracket every freaking year is unacceptable,” she said. “It’s wrong.”

The last two times they made the tournament, Syracuse teams also fell to UConn in the second round. In 2021, under head coach Quentin Hillsman, they emerged from the eight-nine game and got swatted down just like they did this year. In 2024, Legette-Jack tasted defeat as a six seed against an underseeded Huskies squad that had dealt with injuries in the early part of the season. Plus, coaching the Buffalo Bulls in 2019, she also crashed into a second-seeded UConn and lost at Gampel Pavilion.

The 53-point margin in the final score on Monday actually flatters Syracuse, because UConn didn’t play a full 40 minutes. At halftime, Geno Auriemma’s undefeated defending champs led the Orange 65-12, including a 31-0 run. Azzi Fudd scored 34 while shooting 8-of-11 from three without even featuring in fourth-quarter action.

“We, I thought, deserved a little more respect,” Legette-Jack said. “I think that we’ve earned the right to go anywhere outside of a four-hour radius.”

The veteran coach, who took Buffalo to a Cinderella Sweet 16 as an 11-seed in 2018, is probably looking with envy today at the 10th-seeded University of Virginia, who was judged by the committee to be a slightly worse team but had an easier path to the third round by beating Georgia and then Iowa in a double-OT thriller at Carver-Hawkeye. There’s no knowing if Syracuse could have managed the same feat, but a change of scenery probably couldn’t hurt.

“I saw the distraction. I saw the looks in seeing all those Final Four championships,” Legette-Jack said of the banners in Storrs. “And I saw the weight go on the back of those young ladies’ heels, to the point where they couldn’t make free throws. And so I knew that we were in trouble at around 2:30 this afternoon.”

Tip-off was at 6:00, but that still strikes me as a stray note of optimism in an otherwise defeatist press conference. Most folks knew that Syracuse was in trouble on Selection Sunday.