NCAA Basketball: 25 biggest Selection Sunday snubs since 2000

25) 2007 Syracuse Orange

The Syracuse Orange were just coming off four consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament. They entered the season ranked 20th in the country. The Orange peaked at No. 15 during their seven-week stretch of being in the top-25.

They lost to two ranked opponents at the time, but both ended up missing out on the Tournament. The loss to the Drexel Dragons gave them their third loss in the non-conference, which eventually gave them a record of 9-3 going into Big East play.

Syracuse finished fifth in the Big East with a 10-6 record. Two games above .500 in fifth place out of 16 teams usually favors well. The year before and the next, the Big East received eight bids. In 2007 however they got just six. The Marquette Golden Eagles finished with the same record and the Villanova Wildcats went 9-7, as both received bids over the Orange.

Head-to-head rarely ever means anything when picking at-large bids. But a team certainly feels cheated when they either tie or finish better than that team in the conference. Syracuse knocked off Marquette in their only meeting together and managed to split with Villanova. The Orange beat the Wildcats in their first meeting, but Villanova edged them out in the final meeting.

The biggest win for the Orange came at the end of February when they beat the No. 12 Georgetown Hoyas, who ended up making the Final Four. Syracuse picked up a win in the Big East Tournament to go 22-9, but lost to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, who ended up making the Tournament themselves.

They did lose to five team that didn’t end up making the NCAA Tournament, but did finish inside the RPI top-50. Even with wins over three tournament teams from the Big East, Syracuse missed out on dancing, which led to a two-year drought.