Last week, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) announced a major fixture of its basketball schedule for the 2026-27 season. While game dates and times were not announced, we do know who the Syracuse men's basketball team will play - and where.

In general, the schedule should have fans excited, because there are several marquee opponents coming to the JMA Wireless Dome, and the road schedule features a big slate of winnable games too.

But while the likes of Duke and North Carolina are coming to Central New York, there is another major storyline that will unfold in the home schedule: The return of former head coach Adrian Autry.

Autry spent three years as the head coach at Syracuse, taking over for Hall of Famer Jim Boeheim. Autry went 49-48 in those three years, failing to make a single NCAA Tournament. The Orange were 15-17 this past season and were eliminated in the first round of the conference tournament by SMU. He was fired in March and replaced by Gerry McNamara.

Since being fired, he has joined the coaching staff at Virginia, who is also slated to visit the JMA Wireless Dome. Virginia is coached by Ryan Odom, who previously worked with Autry at Virginia Tech. 

McNamara and Autry worked together on Boeheim's staff and McNamara was an assistant under Autry in his first season as head coach. And McNamara has spoken highly of his relationship with Autry on multiple occasions, so it's clear that he will be able to handle the emotions of the reunion matchup well. The question really is about how Autry is received by the home crowd, and how he handles the emotion of it all.

Though the three years as a head coach were disappointing, the fans should be appreciative of his more than 30-year tenure as a solid representative of the university and the program.

A four-player (1990-93) who started 116 games, Autry averaged 12.7 ppg for the Orange, including 16.7 his final season. A two-time All-Big East selection, he also was a member of the 1993-94 All-Region team and of the All-Freshman team in 1990-91. He went to the NCAA Tournament three times, just missing out on the Final Four run in 1995-96.

If you enjoyed watching Syracuse basketball in the 1990s and early 2000s, Autry is one of the guys who helped carry the program to those places.

He spent more than a decade on Boeheim's coaching staff before ascending to the head coaching position before the 2023-24 season. 

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