Dyaisha Fair Named All-ACC First Team, Alyssa Latham Tabbed All-Freshman Team
Charlotte – Second-year Syracuse women’s basketball Head Coach Felisha Legette-Jack ’89 is the 2024 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year. In addition to Syracuse earning Coach of the Year honors in the name of Legette-Jack, fifth-year guard Dyaisha Fair was named first team All-ACC and was the runner up in ACC Player of the Year voting, while freshman Alyssa Latham earned All-Freshman Team honors.
“I am grateful to be named the ACC Coach of the Year by my peers and the media,” Legette-Jack said. “I am proud to represent my home and Syracuse University as our head coach. This award is a team award and is a direct reflection of the work our student-athletes, coaches and staff put in and I am humbled for us to be recognized. Let’s go Orange!”
Legette-Jack is the first Syracuse coach, men’s or women’s, to earn ACC Coach of the Year honors in basketball. She also becomes the third Syracuse women’s basketball head coach to be named Coach of the Year in their conference, joining her former head coach Barbara Jacobs (1987-88) and Quentin Hillsman (2007-08), who previously earned Big East Coach of the Year accolades. Fair is the first back-to-back All-ACC First Team honoree since Tiana Mangakahia (2018-2019), while Latham is the first All-Freshman Team honoree for Syracuse since Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi (2019).
“This is such an exciting and incredibly well-deserved recognition of Coach Jack’s transformation of the women’s basketball program at Syracuse,” says Director of Athletics John Wildhack. “The amount of energy, passion and talent she brings to this program and the significant impact she has every day on our student-athletes, the Orange community and Central New York is unrivaled. She is deeply committed to the success of her student-athletes- both on and off the court. I am grateful that Coach Jack returned to her alma mater and am tremendously proud of all she has achieved in just two short years.”
A Syracuse native, Legette-Jack has led the Orange to one of their most successful regular seasons in history, tying program records for regular season wins (23), conference wins (13) and ACC road wins (6). Syracuse is 23-6 overall and went 13-5 in the ACC earning the No. 3 seed in the upcoming Ally ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament (March 6-10).
In 2022, she returned to her alma mater and inherited a team that had just completed one of its worst seasons in over a decade with a depleted roster. The Orange won 20 games in her first season and reached the Super 16 of the Women’s NIT.
Legette-Jack has guided SU into the spotlight and a third-place finish in the nation’s best league in her second season on The Hill. Syracuse is 4-1 against Associated Press (AP) Top-25 teams and currently ranks No. 20. The Orange are projected as a 5-seed in the NCAA Tournament according to ESPN Bracketologist Charlie Creme, which would be SU’s first appearance since 2021, and is in the conversation of being a top-16 seed which would give ‘Cuse the right to host the first two rounds at the JMA Wireless Dome.
Fair earned All-ACC First Team honors for the second-straight season. The Rochester, N.Y., native is fifth all-time in NCAA Division I women’s basketball scoring with 3,328 career points. Fair is averaging 22.0 points per game with 4.6 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.3 steals per game. She ranks third in the league in scoring, leads the ACC in 3-point field goals per game (3.6) and 3-point field goal percentage (.379) and is eighth in free throw percentage (.812). On the defensive side of the ball, Fair is fourth in the ACC in steals per game (2.3) and had a season-high six steals in the ACC opener against #13 Notre Dame.
She became the fastest player in program history to score 1,000 points at Syracuse (50 games) and became one of 16 women to score over 3,000 career points in NCAA DI competition and one of 26 total Division I basketball players to reach the milestone earlier this season. Fair has led SU in scoring in 23 games this season while scoring in double figures in 28-of-29 games, including each of the last 24 games.
Latham, the first ESPN Hoop Gurls Top-100 recruit of the Legette-Jack era, is one of five players selected to the All-Freshman Team. The Chicago-area native averages 8.8 points and a team-best 7.2 rebounds per game in 29 appearances with 23 starts. She’s scored in double figures 12 times, including a season-high 23 points against Alabama in the ACC/SEC Challenge. Latham is also a defensive force for the Orange, with a team-best 1.4 blocks per game, good for eighth in the ACC and the only freshman in the top-10.
Syracuse earned the double bye in the 2024 Ally ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament and will face either 6-seed Florida State or #11-seed Virginia/#14-seed Wake Forest in the quarterfinals on Friday, March 8. Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m. on ACC Network.
Season tickets for the 2024-25 season are on sale now. The Orange are 29-5 at home the last two seasons and have won 26-straight non-conference games at the JMA Wireless Dome. Fans can purchase tickets online (Cuse.com/tickets) or by calling the JMA Dome Box Office at 888-DOME-TIX.
