Orange Watch: Waving goodbye to the Big East

bigeastbroken
Syracuse will leave the Big East in July

Item: It’s dwindling down to Syracuse’s last days of competition as a Big East member.

Let the record show that the SU women’s NCAA lacrosse quarterfinal round victory over Florida this past Sat. in the Dome was the final Orange victory as a Big East conference representative in the building’s 33-year history, the season after Syracuse played its first Big East basketball game in Jan. 1980.

bigeastbroken
Syracuse will leave the Big East in July

(And adding to the school’s record NACDA Director’s Cup season for accomplishments by all of the athletic department’s programs, Syracuse is the only school to have both its men’s and women’s teams playing in the lacrosse semi-finals!)

» Related: Syracuse finds familiar foe waiting in Final Four

While the school has participated in ACC social events and the official spring meetings, SU is playing it by the book with no public display of being in the conference until after the official July 1, 2013 entry date, and behind the scenes plenty is going on for the conversion, including the eventual ubiquitous placement of the ACC conference logo on the Dome’s football field/basketball court replacing that of the Big East.

But first the league’s all-time anchor school can leave with a flair, hoping to say “goodbye” with a couple of lacrosse national titles this weekend.

For more Syracuse coverage, Like our Facebook page and follow us @TheJuiceOnline.

Avatar photo
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.