After a disappointing 71-69 overtime loss against Pitt on Saturday afternoon, Syracuse men's basketball coach Adrian Autry took the podium for possibly the final time at the JMA Wireless Dome.

The future is unclear for the head coach, who just wrapped up his third regular season at the helm of the program. The Orange are 15-16 and earned the No. 14 seed in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Tournament, which begins Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C. SU will take on SMU at 4:30 p.m. ET.

Presuming Syracuse doesn't win five games in five days to win the conference title, it will miss the NCAA Tournament for the fifth straight year, meaning that Autry has never guided them to March Madness. While Autry has given plenty to the program as both a player and coach, fans have grown unruly at the program's stagnation/regression.

"I was trying to win a game today. And again, this is college athletics, this is sports. So I only need to worry about today.

I can't get ahead. And the speculation, that's part of it. Speculation, rumors, that's part of it. But the only thing I can do is focus on the team and try to get us ready to win games.

That's all I've been really focusing on, is trying to get our guys ready. And that's about it.

Reporter: You talked in the past about having to meet an Orange Standard. Do you feel the standard has been met these three years, and what's been missing in doing that?

Autry: When you talk about the standard, obviously from a win column, I would say we probably did it once. That was my first year.

The last two years, from a win standpoint, has not been. But when I did my press conference and I talked about the Orange standard and getting back to it, it was different. The different set of rules, it was a whole different thing, right?

And I mean analytics and everything, NIL, all that stuff, right? And I probably should have really peeled that back a little bit more. And the standard for what I grew up and what I played with, that's different now. It's a lot of things that need to work together in unison to get to that standard.

The way college athletics is, it's a change. In particular, I know everybody would think I'm talking about NIL. Yes, NIL is a part of it, but it's also the transfer portal. That's a part of it. When we had the standard, we were able to retain and develop and have guys.

And every coach, I'm not saying anything, every coach is going through that. So getting back to the standard, It's gonna be a little bit more challenging than we all thought it would be, or it is, because everything has changed. Thank you.

The Orange were projected to improve their struggles from the past few seasons (14-19 in 2024-25). If Syracuse loses on Tuesday, this season will mark just the sixth losing season in program history. Two of those six will have come under Autry. 

Earlier this month, Brady Farkas offered his take on how Syracuse fans should respect the former player in his likely final days as the team's head coach. If Tuesday is the final game for Autry, he will finish with a 49-48 record in three seasons.

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