Orange Watch: A good sign for Tyus Battle returning to Syracuse?

Tyus Battle
Syracuse Orange guard Tyus Battle (25) reacts during the first half of a second round game of the 2018 ACC tournament against the North Carolina Tar Heels at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Item: A good sign?

The player featured on cuse.com promoting 2018-19 Syracuse basketball season tickets is…Tyus Battle.  Does the school know something about Battle’s future plans that he has yet to make public?

Obviously, if Battle returns to the program the Orange can deploy the same starting lineup that made a surprising Sweet 16 run this past season, two prominent bench players, a ready-to-contribute transfer,  and a minimum of two recruits with the likely addition of a third newcomer.

By-the-way, the Orange player featured on cuse.com promoting 2018 football tickets is not surprisingly quarterback Eric Dungey, while redshirt sophomore attackman Stephen Rehfuss is featured promoting ’18 lacrosse tickets.

» Related: What is Syracuse guard Tyus Battle waiting for?

Item: It’s no surprise that the ACC again scheduled Syracuse and Duke for a home-and-home pairing, part of the recently announced complete schedule of home and away league opponents for the 2018-19 season.  The SU-DU matchup has resonated in the ‘Cuse’s short ACC tenure.

For the third time in the upcoming sixth season of ACC play, Syracuse and Duke are guaranteed to play a minimum of two times, when SU was matched with the Blue Devils, and Clemson, as its two rotating conference foes, joining annual home/away partners Boston College and Pittsburgh.

After home/away matchups in 2014 and 2015, the teams played single regular season games between 2016-18, in addition to the pleasant surprise of meeting Duke for a second time in the NCAA Midwest regional semifinals this past season.  

The  2014 games got the rivalry off to a bang producing an NCAA on-campus record Dome crowd of 35,446 watching the ‘Cuse win a thriller in overtime, followed by the infamous Jim Boeheim ejection after nearly ripping his sports jacket off following an offensive foul call on C.J. Fair in an eventual 66-60 defeat at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Ironically, Syracuse, Duke, and Clemson formed three of the four teams (Kansas) that played at the NCAA regional site in Omaha in March.  

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About Brad Bierman 848 Articles
Now in his sixth decade of covering SU sports, Brad was sports director of WSYR radio for eight years into the early 1990s, then wrote the Orange Watch column for The Big Orange/The Juice print publication for 18 years. A Syracuse University graduate, Brad currently runs his own media consulting business in the Philadelphia suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @BradBierman.