Syracuse women’s basketball: ACC Rankings and AP Poll Update for January 7th

With the new year comes some midseason madness for both the Syracuse Orange women’s basketball team (11-4, 2-2) and across the women’s basketball world.

With upsets galore and much to discuss, let’s hop right into our weekly recap of the Orange and what else is going on across the NCAAW landscape.

The Orange this week and next week

Note: All team records include games from up to and including Thursday, January 5.

Syracuse had a pretty successful week, going 1-1 after barely losing 56-54 to then-#6 NC State Sunday night before beating Pittsburgh by 18 points in its most recent win Thursday evening. The Orange now move to 2-2 against the ACC this season.

This week, Syracuse will head off for a quick two-game road trip. The team will first take on Clemson Sunday afternoon for the first time since the 2022 ACC Tournament, where the Tigers trounced the Orange by 19 points. After that, Syracuse will travel to Boston College to take on the Eagles Thursday night.

The TNIAAM Orange Player of the Week

This week’s winner: Georgia Woolley

After a slow start to the season, Woolley earns her first TNIAAM Orange Player of the Week nod after dropping back-to-back 23-point performances against NC State and Pittsburgh. For the week, Woolley averaged 23 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 steals while shooting 58% from the field and 39% from three.

(Honorable mentions: Kyra Wood’s stock continues to go up, especially if she continues to excel as a rebounder and shot-blocker inside. Wood has looked great recently. Ditto for Dariauna Lewis.)

ACC power rankings and a look around the conference

Note: All team records include games from up to and including Thursday, January 5.

Here are the latest standings in the ACC:

It was a crazy week for the ACC which saw then-#6 NC State and then-#13 North Carolina both drop in the standings after some big wins by Boston College and Miami, while programs such as Duke, Florida State, and Virginia have looked great start off despite their low rankings in the ACC’s preseason poll.

Heading into the weekend, here are some games to watch for this week with the ACC programs:

• #9 Virginia Tech. (13-2, 3-2) @ Miami (9-6, 2-2) on Sunday afternoon
• Virginia (13-2, 2-2) @ #10 NC State (12-3, 2-2) on Sunday late-afternoon
• #4 Notre Dame (12-1, 3-0) @ #22 North Carolina (9-5, 0-3) on Sunday late-afternoon
• #10 NC State (12-3, 2-2) @ Florida State (15-2, 4-0) on Thursday evening
• Louisville (12-5, 3-1) @ #9 Virginia Tech. (13-2, 3-2) on Thursday night

Latest changes in the AP poll

Note: AP top-25 poll information includes games from up to Monday, January 2.

March couldn’t come any sooner. Despite the top-three programs remaining the same, 19 of the remaining 22 teams saw a new ranking in this week’s AP Poll.

For context, here is the latest AP top 25 from earlier this week:

The biggest surprise of the week is the rise of Duke from unranked to #19, while North Carolina fell from a borderline top 10 team to barely in the top 25. Arkansas dropped out in this week’s poll, while six teams jumped up by at least three spots in the latest AP poll.

The other big takeaway: the ACC is way more competitive than we thought. In fact, ESPN made that pretty clear in its latest NCAAW bracketology update. Per that bracket update, eight teams are currently projected to make the NCAAW Tournament, six of which (!!!) are projected as of now to finish as #6 seeds or higher. And that’s not including Clemson, who currently projects as a “first four out” team.

With some talented ACC programs off to a semi-slow start and others rising out of nowhere, the ACC is looking more and more like the conference to beat this year.

And for Syracuse, that’s going to make things way more interesting with 14 games left to go against the ACC before the conference tournament.