Syracuse women’s basketball picked to finish seventh in ACC

Thursday is the ACC women’s basketball media day, and with that comes predictions for the 2017-18 season. The ACC unveiled the results of head coach and Blue Ribbon panel voting, which project the Syracuse Orange in seventh place this year.

Notre Dame, Louisville, Duke and Florida State took the one through four spots in both polls. Then the differences started from there:

• Miami was picked fifth by the Blue Ribbon panel and eighth by coaches
• Virginia was sixth according to the panel, but fifth according to coaches
• The panel had Georgia Tech ninth, but the coaches said sixth

As mentioned Syracuse was projected seventh by both, which is pretty good considering how much the Orange lose from last year’s squad. Gabby Cooper is the only one of the team’s top seven scorers from last season to return. Alexis Peterson, Brittney Sykes, Briana Day, Bria Day, Isabella Slim and Julia Chandler all departed. That provides ample opportunity for young players, and luckily SU brings in an impressive group of freshman and transfers to fill the void.

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Syracuse brought in a top-10 class of five players for this season, making for the best recruiting class in school history. Along with those additions, two JUCO transfers joined this offseason, Isis Young (Florida) and Jasmine Nwajei (Wagner) are both eligible to play after sitting out last season. Nwajei was the NCAA’s leading scorer in 2015-16.

The rest of the Blue Ribbon and coaches polls were some amalgamation of NC State, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Clemson and Boston College. Syracuse finished sixth last season, with an 11-5 conference record.

Do we think seventh is too high? Too low? What are you early thoughts on the Orange women’s basketball team’s prospects for this season?