Felisha Legette-Jack ripped the NCAA selection committee for her and Syracuse having to face behemoth UConn in the NCAA Tournament yet again, calling it a “personal attack” against the longtime women’s college hoops coach.
Legette-Jack used her opening statement following the Orange’s 98-45 second round loss to the Huskies in Storrs, Connecticut, as a venue to take the committee to task.
“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 — it’s unfair to the young people,” she told reporters. “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.”
The Syracuse coach’s criticisms aren’t without merit, with Legette-Jack’s Orange teams having to face the Huskies both times that they’ve reached the NCAA Tournament in her four years at the helm of the program.
Additionally, UConn has knocked out Syracuse in five of the program’s last seven trips to the tournament and during Legette-Jack’s time as head coach at Buffalo, her squad in 2019 lost ot UConn in Storrs in the second round.
Unlike the men’s tournament, the top four seeds host games on their campuses in the first two rounds before moving to neutral site locations later on.
“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. It’s — somebody — and if you’re on the committee and you’ve been around for more than a year or two or five to 10, 15 years, you understand what that looks like,” Legette-Jack said. “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.
“But I think what you’re going to notice, that everybody that comes through Geno and UConn is going to get the wrath of what they can bring.”
Part of the issue is that the NCAA is somewhat incentivized to place teams in brackets closer to their campus in order to save money.
The NCAA has to charter a flight for any team that has to travel at least 400 miles during the opening weekend of the tournament, with the range dipping to 350 miles for the regional finals and Final Four.
Legette-Jack made sure to note before she left the dias that she had a lot of respect for UConn women’s hoops.
“Just before I go, I just want to say thank you, UConn, for growing women’s basketball to newfound heights every year,” she said. “You just make it great. And our hope is that we can grow our program so that we can be competitive enough so when they bring us back here next year, we’ll be more prepared.”
Syracuse went 24-9 this season overall, while posting a 12-6 record in ACC play.