The new ACC schedule means ACC Teams will not play every team each year

Who do you want to skip in 25-26?

Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images

After a brief period of uncertainty, Syracuse Orange fans are now getting a better sense of what a portion of the schedule will look like next year for the men’s basketball team.

For the 2025-26 season, Syracuse and the rest of the ACC will be switching to an 18-game conference schedule. The ACC made the official announcement on Wednesday. It will be the first time the Orange will play 18 conference games instead of 20 games since the 2018-19 season.

As part of the decision to move to 18 games, Syracuse’s conference schedule for 2025-26 will include a “primary partner.” That opponent is the Pittsburgh Panthers, who the Orange will play once at home and once on the road.

In addition, the Orange will play a home-and-home series against one “variable partner” in a given year. The variable partner will be determined each season.

For the rest of the ACC portion of the schedule, Syracuse and the rest of the conference will play one game against 14 of the remaining 15 teams annually, so someone will be skipped each regular season. (Ed. note: Who would you like to see the Orange miss next year?)

The ACC says the decision came after a period of strategic assessing that included consulting with athletic directors, coaches and others. The conference also says it worked with experts to conduct analysis “to examine the conference’s basketball product, metrics and scheduling.”

“Moving to an 18-game conference schedule is a direct result of our ongoing strategic review and analysis and provides our schools a better balance of non-conference and conference games, while also allowing them more autonomy in the scheduling process,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips wrote in a news release. “This decision reflects our on-going prioritization to do what’s best for ACC Men’s Basketball, and we appreciate the thoughtfulness of our membership and the support from our television partners.”

As Phillips notes, the move will essentially give teams the extra flexibility to schedule an extra two non-conference opponents.

One more important element to consider with scheduling: the ACC also confirmed that league play will still start in late December and will conclude on the first Saturday of March

The conference’s decision comes as ACC representation in the NCAA Tournament continues to wane.

This decade, the ACC has had multiple teams make runs all the way to the Final Four (the list: North Carolina and Duke in 2022, Miami in 2023 and NC State most recently in 2024). That being said, the number of programs in the conference who did enough to get into the tournament is trending down.

After getting seven teams (including Syracuse) into the tournament in 2021, that number went down to five teams over the next three years. Just four teams qualified for the tournament this past year.

Two factors in that trend include: 1) plenty of teams are in a transition period after moving on from long-time coaches and 2) NET rankings (a key part in a program’s postseason resume) not having much upside to improve with a conference schedule that included 18 teams and 20 games.

That being said, part of it is also not capitalizing on the non-conference slate. This decision will provide more opportunity for teams like Syracuse to diversify the resume, but that would also mean capitalizing on those chances.

So far on the non-conference front, Syracuse will play in the Player’s Era Festival, a new multi-team event that includes 16 total programs and will be held during the week of Thanksgiving. All participating schools will receive $1 million dollars that will be distributed to the players. The opponents Syracuse will compete against in that event remains to be determined.

With the conference schedule logistics now finalized, the Orange going forward will be tasked with filling out those remaining spots for the 2025-26 season.

As always, we’ll keep you updated as more schedule-related news for Syracuse becomes official.