Rich Barnes-Imagn Images
On Monday, the women’s basketball team at Syracuse saw its season end on a very low note after suffering a wildly lopsided defeat at the hands of UConn in the NCAA Tournament. It was a familiar result for Orange head coach Felisha Legette-Jack, who called out the selection committee after her team was once again forced to face off against the Huskies toward the start of March Madness.
There isn’t a single women’s basketball program in the country that’s more synonymous with success than UConn, which Geno Auriemma transformed into a national powerhouse after taking over in Storrs ahead of the 1984-85 season.
The Huskies have a laughably impressive postseason résumé that includes the 12 national championships they’ve won since 1995, an uninterrupted stretch of NCAA Tournament appearances that stretches back to 1989, and a streak of 14 straight Final Four appearances that spanned from 2008 to 2022.
The team entered the current season as reigning champions, and they once again headed into March Madness as a one-seed on the back of the perfect 34-0 record and their 13th consecutive Big East tournament win.
They headed into the NCAA Tournament as the odds-on favorite to defend their crown, and they got one step closer to that goal by advancing to the Sweet Sixteen at the expense of a Syracuse squad led by a head coach who is sick and tired of having her season cut short by the same foe.
Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack called out the NCAA after losing to UConn in the NCAA Tournament for the third time
Making the NCAA Tournament should be a reason for celebration, but nothing puts a damper on that development like looking at the bracket and realizing there’s a very good chance you’re going to be on a collision course with UConn.
That’s the situation Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack has found herself dealing with three times since 2019. She was still coaching at Buffalo that year when the Huskies got a 12-point win over her 10th-seeded team in the second round, and the Orange were a six-seed when they fell by eight points after getting a lone win in 2022.
This year, Syracuse earned the right to face off against UConn yet again with a win over Iowa State in the opening round. It ended up being a game Legette-Jack and her team would like to forget, as the Huskies had a 50-8 lead (yes, you read that right) toward the end of the first half and ended up winning by 53 to advance to the Sweet Sixteen with the 98-45 victory.
After the game, the head coach made it clear she respected UConn’s ability to dominate for decades on end. However, she does not feel the same way about the folks on the selection committee, who she seems to think have a vendetta against her after one of her teams once again served as a sacrificial lamb for UConn.
Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack lamented her frustrations for her teams continuing to be eliminated by UConn in NCAA subregionals at Gampel
“After being in this business for 37 years and to have to be in this particular bracket every freakin’ year is unacceptable” pic.twitter.com/gLEDqY17Mu
— UConn Women’s Basketball Videos (@SNYUConn) March 24, 2026
Here’s what she had to say:
“For us to do what we’ve done, to continuously have to come to UConn, and every single school that I go to, from Buffalo to [Syracuse], it’s unfair to the young people. I don’t know what it is. Somebody said, is there something that they might have against me? If that’s the case, then we need to communicate about that.
“After being in this business for 37 years, and to have to come and be in this particular bracket every fricking year is unacceptable. It’s wrong…
I have been on those committees to see how it’s done, how you can put people on different lines. Put us on a 10-line, whatever. But for us to continue to come to Connecticut year after year after year is, to me, it’s a personal attack, because I just think that we are way better than what we performed today.”
It’s worth noting that UConn had nothing to do with three of the NCAA Tournament appearances where Legette-Jack’s team came short of a national championship in Buffalo; they lost to Ohio State in the first round in 2016, fell to South Carolina in the Sweet Sixteen in 2018, and had a one-and-done run courtesy of Tennessee in 2022.
It’s easy to understand why she’s less than thrilled with having to face off against UConn early in the tournament when you consider the higher seed has home court advantage until contests shift to neutral sites after the first two rounds. However, it’s hard to argue the venue would have made a difference when your team ends up losing by more points than you were able to score.