Syracuse women’s basketball: Orange to play Alabama Crimson Tide in first ACC/SEC Challenge

Felisha Legette-Jack and the Syracuse Orange women’s basketball team on Wednesday secured their first official game for the 2023-2024 season. Spoiler alert: this is history in the making and then some.

After falling short of making the NCAA Tournament last season, Syracuse hopes to grab a resume-boosting win against the Alabama Crimson Tide in the first-ever matchup between both programs. The teams will meet on Thursday, November 30 at the JMA Wireless Dome. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. EST with the game available for stream on one of the ESPN networks.

Syracuse is competing with Alabama as part of the first ACC/SEC Challenge, a multi-year partnership that runs until the 2025-2026 season with the ACC, SEC and ESPN which will see 28 total games between both conferences in men’s and women’s basketball.

Last season, Syracuse (20-13, 9-9) proved to be a productive team that found itself with a slim chance to make the tournament but ultimately did not produce enough consistent wins against the nation’s best programs. Facing a NCAA Tournament team from last year

The Orange are projected to make the NCAA Tournament this year according to ESPN’s early bracketology as a “Last Four In” team. Alabama will certainly be an early-season test for this year’s Orange.

The Crimson Tide finished 20-11 overall and 9-7 in the SEC (including the seventh-best conference record), finding their way to the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. The game will take play before the schedule shifts over to purely competition against the ACC, so this will be a good litmus test for Syracuse early on. Alabama also finished 29th overall in 2022-2023 in NET ranking, way above Syracuse’s ranking of 54th overall.

Here is the complete schedule for the first ACC/SEC Challenge (note: all times are EST):

Wednesday, Nov. 29

Florida at Georgia Tech, 5 p.m.

Notre Dame at Tennessee, 5 p.m.

Vanderbilt at NC State, 7:15 p.m.

Miami at Mississippi State, 7:15 p.m.

Louisville at Ole Miss, 9:15 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 30

Missouri at Virginia, 5 p.m.

Duke at Georgia, 5 p.m.

Alabama at Syracuse, 7 p.m.

South Carolina at North Carolina, 7 p.m.

Arkansas at Florida State, 7 p.m.

Boston College at Kentucky, 7 p.m.

Texas A&M at Wake Forest, 9 p.m.

Virginia Tech at LSU, 9 p.m.

Clemson at Auburn, 9 p.m.

Syracuse fans wanted ‘Bama. Now, they’ve got them. Mark your calendars.