Syracuse continued a frustrating start to the season on Wednesday with a loss to in-state rivals Albany, 73-70, on a last-second 3-pointer by Lilly Phillips. With the loss, Syracuse fell to 2-3 on the season despite playing all five games at home against a fairly comfortable schedule.
NO. WORDS.@Lilly_Phillips4 from @kaci_donovan #UAUKNOW // #AEHoops pic.twitter.com/359wnzum2n
— UAlbany WBB (@UAlbanyWBB) November 21, 2024
Losing to the Great Danes was the last straw for Orange coach Felisha Legette-Jack, who went on one of the more memorable rants in recent college basketball history during her postgame press conference. She called out her team for not being locked in, but also lit into the fanbase for its lack of support.
The official attendence on Wednesday was 2,038, though the actual crowd seemed smaller than that.
Here is Legette-Jack's opening statement in full:
"This is what I've been trying to tell our young people on this team. Nobody cares about our program. Nobody cares about women's basketball. It's not nobody's fault, the laughing and all that fun stuff, but nobody is into it like we are and that's OK. But I'm trying to get our kids to understand we've got to be so locked into us that we don't see that the fan base is like 12 people here. We can't see people that's not on the court not really locked in. Because it's about our dreams. It's about our decision that we're going to rise above it all.
"So this is the lesson learned. Albany is a good team. I'm going to say on the record that the better team did not win today, but the better prepared team won today. The team that decided that every single possession was going to matter as if their life depended on it. And we thought we had a tomorrow. So we're going to take this and sit on it for a day, and we're going to go home. And then we're going to get on a plane and go down to Florida and we're going to decide what this really means to each one of us. And we'll get better.
"I'm glad I walked in when I did so our players can see. Nobody f---ing cares, man. We up here crying outside... let's go have a parter in here. It's not you guys, it's everybody. And that's OK. But what's not OK is us not giving 100% for ourselves. That's life lesson stuff that we're talking about, man. But we've got to decide that we have to hunker down and turn the noise out from all the people on the outside and lock into the inside and get real with each other. This is a perfect situation for us. This is what's supposed to have happened for us right now, and we'll get better."
And her reponse when asked later in the press conference about what she wants to see from the fanbase:
"The first thing we're playing for is each other. We're not going to get it twisted. We got to close the noise out, whatever that noise is. If they're not real fans, and they really love me like I think they should, they come to the game and really be a part of this thing and not just send 30 people to this game. So I'm disappointed in my fan base here. If I'm home and his is supposed to be home, prove it. This is ridiculous. I'm the one coach that's from this place and this is the respect that we get here? My mom always said you can love somebody, but if they ain't loving you back, you gotta love somebody else."
A Syracuse native, Legette-Jack played at the school from 1984-89 and was named Big East Freshman of the Year in 1985. She later joined the coaching staff as an assistant from 1993-2000, before taking a number of other jobs. Most notably, she had tremendous success at Buffalo, where she led the Bulls to the Sweet 16 for the first, and only, time in program history.
She returned to Syracuse to become the head coach in 2022 and immediately got the Orange back on track after a few down years. Last season, they went 24-8 and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament for just the eighth time in program history.
They lost a lot of talent in the offseason, however, including All-American guard Dyaisha Fair, who scored 22.3 points per game and was a second-round pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft. So far, they've understandably struggled to replace her production. If the first few weeks are any indication, this could be a long winter in Upstate New York.
