Syracuse basketball schedule: Orange will host Bucknell in 2019-20, per report

This week already had some Syracuse Orange football scheduling news, and now we add a men’s basketball scheduling update to go with that.

According to a report from CBSSports’ Jon Rothstein, Syracuse will host the Bucknell Bison on a yet-to-be-confirmed date as part of its 2019-20 non-conference schedule.

The addition of Bucknell makes it three confirmed non-ACC games now for 2019-20. Along with the Bison, Syracuse will play two of the Oklahoma State Cowboys, Ole Miss Rebels and Penn State Nittany Lions as part of the Preseason NIT in Brooklyn. I already shared some thoughts on why that field’s kind of... meh.

Syracuse and Bucknell have faced off 10 different times from 1915 to 2011. The Orange have won nine of those, with the lone loss coming in November 2005. Syracuse also beat the Bison, 104-81 in the 1989 NCAA Tournament.

With a 20-game ACC schedule for this coming season and beyond, that means we have just 11 non-conference dates to fill, versus 13 in previous years. The ACC/Big Ten Challenge will make up one of those. Would assume that Cornell and Colgate are on there too. So we’re already down to just five games left. There’s yet to be any news around Georgetown being added to the schedule again after the four-game series was completed last year.

Syracuse will open the 2019-20 season in atypical fashion, hosting the national champion (ugh) Virginia Cavaliers as part of the ACC Network launch. As other games are added to the non-conference slate, we’ll be sure to update things here.