Elijah Hughes

[EastCoast2]

Playing devils advocate, there are a couple thousand kids in high school currently who can steal passes and dunk.

Irrelevant. The poster in question said that he could make a better highlight reel than Hughes. I said I doubted that he could steal and dunk, not that there aren't thousands of kids who can do that. I dunked in a pickup game 6 weeks ago, but couldn't do that in a D1 game.

 

[Alsacs]

Coaches reallllllyyyyyy like this kid

Coach sees 6'5" zone guard.
Hughes offense looks scary to be nice.
JB has shown he doesn't care for shooting/skill over measurables and length for the zone.

 

[phil77]

Then why didn't he offer him then? Sounds like Coach Desko.

Being a teammate of Moyer he was seen by tons of coaches at the P5 level a ton. And no one offered him out of high school and nobody thought enough of him to follow him after high school and offer him when he said he was going to transfer. Seems strange for a "top 30 type player"

 

[Brooky03]

Irrelevant. The poster in question said that he could make a better highlight reel than Hughes. I said I doubted that he could steal and dunk, not that there aren't thousands of kids who can do that. I dunked in a pickup game 6 weeks ago, but couldn't do that in a D1 game.

If someone can dunk in a pickup game, chances are good they can dunk in any game.

I say this not having seen any college highlights for Hughes. I just saw the AAU/high school highlights and came away unimpressed.

 

[Deano]

Coach sees 6'5" zone guard.
Hughes offense looks scary to be nice.
JB has shown he doesn't care for shooting/skill over measurables and length for the zone.

Did you say the same thing about Gbinije when he came here?

 

[newmexicuse]

Welcome Elijah...

In general I trust the staff on who they want, especially since we do not take many underclass transfers, and most of the ones that we do take work out just fine.

To me, I believe that the recruiting landscape for us has changed. We are not as desirable a destination as previously between concerns about how long Jimmy will coach, recent mediocrity, and overuse of the Zone. The last few recruiting classes we have had little success with getting Top 50 kids. Previously, the Top 25 was difficult, but we always seen to do well in the Top 25 to Top 100 range.

There is so much one and done going on with the Top recruits, that I think the best way for us to build our program is to find guys who just don't quite have NBA talent, but will stay 3 or 4 years. Reasonably talented senior kids do well in the tournament. They will also provide more consistency during the regular season. If truth be told, unless you are talking mega talented Top Ten type recruits, a kid who has paid his dues, matured, is older, and has a few years of experience will do as well or better as an uperclassman as compared what many one & done types will do as a freshman.

It is the staff's role to properly identify the slightly under the radar talent.

The staff seems very high on Elijah, and if they are right he is exactly the type of talent and kid who fits what we should be doing IMHO.

 

[EastCoast2]

If someone can dunk in a pickup game, chances are good they can dunk in any game.

I say this not having seen any college highlights for Hughes. I just saw the AAU/high school highlights and came away unimpressed.

Seriously? I dunked against my 22-32 year old white collar coworkers, but there's almost zero chance I could dunk if I stepped on a NBA court. Don't you think the defense is a little different? All I had to do was get by one slow-footed guy with no rim protector, I didn't have to get past Westbrook with Jerami Grant waiting to block me from the weakside.

 

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[GooseMutt]

This scares me only because no other big teams had much interest. Don't know much about the guy. What's the potential we could see in this kid?

Under the radar baby!

 

[Alsacs]

Did you say the same thing about Gbinije when he came here?

Gbinije was a top 30 recruit.
This political spin that Hughes would be a top 30 recruit is exactly that spin.
Gbinije was a victim of the coach K numbers game. He had offers from a lot of power five programs.
Hughes is a project.

 

[EastCoast2]

This scares me only because no other big teams had much interest. Don't know much about the guy. What's the potential we could see in this kid?

He said he wanted to move closer to home. That's why he was looking at SU, Iona, and SH.

 

[GooseMutt]

JB has liked him for a little while now. He knows talent so I'll trust him and the staff on this one

This is a big boy with attitude and athlectism who is just scratching the surface as a basketball player. This is a tremendous under the radar get with the benefit of a year to groom him. I'm all in on this kid

 

[Fly Rodder]

Only concerns are:
1) Good size and athleticism, but no one else was interested. Why? It's 2017. Under the radar doesn't really exist anymore.
2) JAB likes big guards and he prioritizes size at the top of the zone over basketball skills.
3) Takes up a scholarship to sit the bench for a year when scholarships may be more wisely invested elsewhere. Last year there were only 10 guys on the roster and three and half couldn't play. That's a bad spot to be in.
4) Quite a few misses in the last few seasons on both under-the-radar and top-100 recruits.

Edited to add: I hope he does great and this is the kind of pick-up that we get to laugh about in the future, but those are some of the reasons why this isn't generating tons of excitement among fans.

 

[cuseinseattle]

Depends on the 2017 players we add.

We should only add 3 non grad transfers right now.

1. Tucker
2. Ayala
3. Wilson

The rest of the 2017 players we add should be grad transfers we won't count towards 2018.

We have 4 2018 openings right now, Hughes is taking one but because Battle is likely gone we will still have 4 openings.

2018 recruiting class needs to be special. That is why I am down on adding Hughes.

I think we add the Slovakian and a grad transfer. That leaves us with 3 with no battle. Hopefully the 3 include Carey.

 

[Brooky03]

Seriously? I dunked against my 22-32 year old white collar coworkers, but there's almost zero chance I could dunk if I stepped on a NBA court. Don't you think the defense is a little different? All I had to do was get by one slow-footed guy with no rim protector, I didn't have to get past Westbrook with Jerami Grant waiting to block me from the weakside.

If we're talking about a fastbreak, there's no rim protector to worry about. I was thinking of a scenario like the one in Hughe's South Kent highlight video. He intercepted a pass around the 3 point line with all of his momentum going down the court. By the time the PG knew the pass was picked off, Hughes already had at least a 10 foot head start. Give any moderately athletic tall guy, who can also dunk, a 10 foot head start with the ball at halfcourt and he's probably going to go the other way for a dunk at any level. Yeah, Westbrook would probably send your dunk back into your face, but James Harden would just stand there and watch you.

 

[Sherman20]

Coach sees 6'5" zone guard.
Hughes offense looks scary to be nice.
JB has shown he doesn't care for shooting/skill over measurables and length for the zone.

I hope that's not the case. Examples besides Ron Patterson?

 

[GooseMutt]

Francis. Are you there? Any comments? Ty

 

[OrangeDW]

Not everyone has to be an immediate stud. This kid sits out a year and then has 3 more years to play. Let's say the kid is a role player providing depth for a couple years and then as an older 5th year senior has a big time year...that's been a pretty common thing on some of our better teams...Z Sims, Andy Rautins, Kueth Duany, and James Southerland come to mind.

 

[Cuse'91]

No one expected MG to shoot as well as he ended up shooting. As highly rated as MCW was, how much will it take for this kid to shoot as well as MCW? Not much...

 

[GooseMutt]

Only concerns are:
1) Good size and athleticism, but no one else was interested. Why? It's 2017. Under the radar doesn't really exist anymore.
2) JAB likes big guards and he prioritizes size at the top of the zone over basketball skills.
3) Takes up a scholarship to sit the bench for a year when scholarships may be more wisely invested elsewhere. Last year there were only 10 guys on the roster and three and half couldn't play. That's a bad spot to be in.
4) Quite a few misses in the last few seasons on both under-the-radar and top-100 recruits.

Edited to add: I hope he does great and this is the kind of pick-up that we get to laugh about in the future, but those are some of the reasons why this isn't generating tons of excitement among fans.

All legitimate points

 

[Sherman20]

4) Quite a few misses in the last few seasons on both under-the-radar and top-100 recruits.

This isn't true in the slightest. You can only make that argument for 2017 and we're not done with the class yet! And many people believe that Brissett and possibly Sidibe are under the radar.

For 2016, Battle, Moyer and Thompson were all top 100 recruits. And Thompson was definitely underrated. I'd argue Battle was too (at least JB thinks so). Moyer we have yet to see, but he could very well be underrated.

 

[Janner]

Welcome Elijah...

In general I trust the staff on who they want, especially since we do not take many underclass transfers, and most of the ones that we do take work out just fine.

To me, I believe that the recruiting landscape for us has changed. We are not as desirable a destination as previously between concerns about how long Jimmy will coach, recent mediocrity, and overuse of the Zone. The last few recruiting classes we have had little success with getting Top 50 kids. Previously, the Top 25 was difficult, but we always seen to do well in the Top 25 to Top 100 range.

There is so much one and done going on with the Top recruits, that I think the best way for us to build our program is to find guys who just don't quite have NBA talent, but will stay 3 or 4 years. Reasonably talented senior kids do well in the tournament. They will also provide more consistency during the regular season. If truth be told, unless you are talking mega talented Top Ten type recruits, a kid who has paid his dues, matured, is older, and has a few years of experience will do as well or better as an uperclassman as compared what many one & done types will do as a freshman.

It is the staff's role to properly identify the slightly under the radar talent.

The staff seems very high on Elijah, and if they are right he is exactly the type of talent and kid who fits what we should be doing IMHO.

I like this pick up as well, and I think your right, to some extent the paradigm for Syracuse recruiting has changed a bit recently. It could have been for the factors you had mentioned, could have been probation, could have just been the college basketball landscape.

Looking at Hughes you have a 6'5 kid who gain 20-25lbs of solid muscle in his freshman year while playing D1 basketball, I don't think many know just how hard that is to do, I don't care how good a S&C program you have (and ECU's is not that good). Im sure the kid worked hard but can I promise you, the reason has much more to do with genetics than anything else, which leads me to believe he is/was a "late bloomer". So he's bigger, stronger, faster and more athletic than he was in High School, and his HS highlight real from an athletic stand point was impressive. We also have to take note of all the resources he has at Syracuse he'll have 19 more months do develop before he has to contribute. That's a TON of time to improve and learn the system.

This also doesn't mean we are going to stop recruiting guards. I fully expect us to go after a stud 2018 pg/combo guard. And it doesn't hurt our selling point telling a 2018 stud his competition is a transfer from ECU who averaged 8 ppg.

 

[Sherman20]

I think we add the Slovakian and a grad transfer. That leaves us with 3 with no battle. Hopefully the 3 include Carey.

I think they expect Thompson to go pro after next season. For 2018, I want Swider, Jones, Carey and Williams. Or King or Naz or Simi if they can land bigger fishes.

 

[two3zone]

Scholarship reductions and for the second time in 3 years we have a guy on the bench who can't even play.

I hope he ends up good, but this seems like a dumb move. It seems like every year we move further away from basketball players towards long 2-3 zone athletes.

I'm over this.

 

[Cuse'91]

Scholarship reductions and for the second time in 3 years we have a guy on the bench who can't even play.

I hope he ends up good, but this seems like a dumb move. It seems like every year we move further away from basketball players towards long 2-3 zone athletes.

I'm over this.

It ain't over yet...