Our weekly look around the WBB landscape
With the Syracuse Orange women’s basketball team (8-2) a little over a third of the way through its season, it’s time to yet again take stock of what’s going on around the NCAAW world.
Per usual, we’ll be looking at where Syracuse stacks up compared to the rest of the ACC, as well as analyzing the latest AP poll of the week. Additionally, we’ll also look at how the Orange performed this week and what’s up next on the docket for Syracuse in the next seven days.
Let’s cut to the chase and take a look at the latest in women’s college basketball.
ACC power rankings and a look around the conference
Note: All team records include games from up to and including Tuesday, December 13.
With Syracuse making its ACC debut against Wake Forest on Sunday, there’s no better time to look at where the Orange stand within its conference.
Here are the latest standings in the ACC:
At 8-2 on the season, Syracuse is in the dead center of the ACC pack with 11 of the conference’s 15 teams yet to play conference opponents.
Only Virginia and Virginia Tech. are the only remaining undefeated teams left in the conference, with Florida State, Duke, NC State, North Carolina, and Notre Dame following closely behind, each with one loss. Boston College became the second team to lose to an ACC opponent following a 15-point defeat to 6th-ranked Virginia Tech.
For all 15 teams in the conference, this weekend marks the beginning of where the real fun begins this season.
With that in mind, here are some notable games to watch for among the ACC teams this week:
- Wake Forest (7-3, 0-1) @ Syracuse (7-3, 0-0) on Sunday afternoon
- Florida State (10-1) @ #9 UConn (7-2) on Sunday afternoon
- #5 Notre Dame (8-1, 0-0) @ #6 Virginia Tech. (10-0, 1-0) on Sunday late-afternoon
- Clemson (8-3, 0-0) @ #8 NC State (9-1, 0-0) on Sunday evening
- #19 Michigan (9-1) @ #7 North Carolina (8-1) on Tuesday evening
Latest changes in the AP poll
Note: AP top-25 poll information includes games from up to Monday, December 12.
From a movement perspective, only a handful of teams combined to move either up or down in the standings. But from looking at things from an ACC standpoint, there are a few narratives that stand out.
Here are where things stand, per the latest AP top-25 poll for Week #5:
The biggest story: the ACC has four teams ranked inside the AP top ten with Notre Dame, Virginia Tech., North Carolina, and NC State all carving out their spots in the NCAAW’s best of the best. This week’s AP rankings confirmed that this year’s ACC is a loaded conference. If you do the math, you’ve got four teams in the AP top 10 (most out of any other conference) and an additional four teams (Louisville, Virginia, Duke, and Florida State all receiving AP poll honorable mention consideration this week. From a Syracuse side of things, the outlook moving forward looks to be a lot tougher in the upcoming weeks.
This team, only one team fell out of the top 25 (Kansas State), with undefeated Kansas taking the spot instead. St. John’s (19 points), Marquette (18 points), and Louisville (14 points) were the next-three teams who received the most honorable mention nods.
Arizona (down eight spots compared to last week) and Michigan (down five spots) trended downward the most in this latest AP poll, while Iowa sneaked closer to the top ten, UCLA continued its surge upward, and the ACC secured four out of the ten spots in the poll.
The Orange this week and next week
Note: All team records include games from up to and including Tuesday, December 13.
Since our last update, Syracuse (8-2) won back-to-back games in double-digits against nonconference opponents Coppin State and Wagner at home.
Syracuse will take on two teams between now and our next weekly look at the NCAAW landscape. On Sunday afternoon, Syracuse will take on Wake Forest (7-3, 0-1) at the JMA Wireless Dome before following that up with a matchup against Albany (5-6) in the Orange’s final nonconference game of the season.
Later this week, we’ll begin to look at ESPN’s projected NCAAW March Madness bracket every other week from now until the end of the season, (again) seeing what Syracuse’s path moving forward stands in the context of what’s going on around the women’s college basketball landscape.