Jalen Brunson, JaQuan Newton: Dates, Details and the Math

[Cuseball]

In the midst of everything else there has been quit e a lot of talk recently about how we dropped the ball with Jalen Brunson , JaQuan Newton and others. I’m not close enough to recruiting to have any idea about the complete inside story but here is some very simple math and dates which might shed some light on the situation. Things become a little clearer when looking at dates and it’s not so easy to just blame the staff for not getting kid x or kid y.

Commitment Dates to keep in Mind:

• JaQuan Newton commits to Miami 8/7/13
• Jalen Brunson commits to Nova 9/10/14
• Tyler Lydon commits to Syracuse 10/17/13
• Malachi commit to Syracuse 12/13/13
• Howard commit to Syracuse 4/14/14
• Diagne commit to Syracuse 6/1/14
• Kaleb Joseph commit to Syracuse 8/7/13
• Chris McCullough 11/5/12

Transfer Dates:

• Patterson and BJ announce transfer March 20, 2015

NBA Declaration Dates:

• Tyler Ennis declares March 27, 2014
• Jerami Grant declares April 14, 2014
• Chris McCullough declares April 2, 2015

Sanction Dates:

• March 6, 2015: Reduction of 12 scholarships over 4 year period
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2015-16
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2016-17
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2017-18
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2018-19

• December 2015 NCAA announces reduction to 8 lost scholarships and will accept Syracuse plan to use 3 scholarships in 2014-15 (so the adjusted penalties)
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2014-15
  • 2 scholarships lost in 2015-16
  • 2 scholarship lost in 2016-17
  • 1 scholarship lost in 2017-18

Syracuse Roster Size:

• 2013-14 roster of 12 scholarship players (Gbinijie, Cooney, Ennis, Grant, Fair, Christmas, Keita, Coleman, Roberson, Patterson, BJ, Obokoh)
• 2014-15 roster of 10 scholarship players (Gbinijie, Cooney, Christmas, McCullough, Coleman, Roberson, Joseph, Patterson, BJ, Obokoh)

Why no Jaquan Newtown in the 2014-15 class?

• Very simply we prioritized Kaleb Joseph over JaQuan Newtown in the summer of 2013. Kaleb was ranked a bit higher (overall and as a point guard). There was not a chance to take both. They were both in the same class and both signed on the same day with respective schools. If Joseph was a miss he was missed by all other major recruiting services too.
• As seen above, the 2013-14 roster consisted of 12 players and only two were seniors (Fair and Keita). Ennis and Grant were expected to return and did not announce until March and April of 2014 (well after recruiting season was done).
• The 2014-15 roster would have been 12 under the assumption Ennis and Grant returned and Joseph and McCullough joined the team
• If we took Newtown as the 3rd point guard it would have been an unnecessary PG luxury. Additionally, the option to take any scholarship reductions in 2014-15 upon NCAA appeal would not have existed. We would have been at 13 scholarships. Taking a 3 scholarship reduction a year early was actually a very good result.

Why no Jalen Brunson in the 2015-16 class?

• Follow the timelines once again and it’s easy to see why he may not have been prioritized.
• We enter the 2014-15 season with a 10 player roster with Christmas as the only senior.
• We have already gotten 4 commitments and all these commitments are early and well before Kaleb plays his first game in the 2014-15 season. There is no chance to evaluate in real game situations.
• 2 of these commitments are very early (Malachi and Lydon (Oct and Dec 2013) and occur before Ennis declares, before Grant declares). This is important as Jimmy and staff assume they already have two very good PG prospects on next year’s roster (Ennis and a highly recruited Joseph)
• By the time Ennis declares (which surprises the staff and they express their disagreement with his decision) the ship has sailed with Brunson and he has a prioritized list of 5 that does not include us. Who knows if we tried to get back in but top tier players usually have enough top tier interest and ignore last minute begging.
• Remember this is the season sanctions hit (March 6, 2015).
  • Post sanction BJ and Patterson announce transfer March 22, 2015
  • McCullough declares April 2, 2015
• When all things shake out the roster size sits at 10. NCAA penalties result in loss of 3 scholarships for 2015-16 so having 10 is the only number that can work. Only later did we find out the Diagne was ruled ineligible and in December we received a reduction in scholarship losses.
• However, after the March 6, 2015 penalties we could not have been higher than 10 scholarships so there was no room at the inn for Brunson!

When you look at the whole situation it becomes a lot more complicated. Simple saying the staff missed the boat on these key recruits does not take into account the scholarship situation and the timing of various announcements. You simply can't just look at a kids recruiting class and bemoan our missing out without understanding the detail. Can’t argue with Quade crap but that is a different story.

Cuse!

 

[NineOneSeven]

Popcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and sodaPopcorn and soda

 

[Shark58]

 

[cuseinseattle]

In the midst of everything else there has been quit e a lot of talk recently about how we dropped the ball with Jalen Brunson , JaQuan Newton and others. I’m not close enough to recruiting to have any idea about the complete inside story but here is some very simple math and dates which might shed some light on the situation. Things become a little clearer when looking at dates and it’s not so easy to just blame the staff for not getting kid x or kid y.

Commitment Dates to keep in Mind:

• JaQuan Newton commits to Miami 8/7/13
• Jalen Brunson commits to Nova 9/10/14
• Tyler Lydon commits to Syracuse 10/17/13
• Malachi commit to Syracuse 12/13/13
• Howard commit to Syracuse 4/14/14
• Diagne commit to Syracuse 6/1/14
• Kaleb Joseph commit to Syracuse 8/7/13
• Chris McCullough 11/5/12

Transfer Dates:

• Patterson and BJ announce transfer March 20, 2015

NBA Declaration Dates:

• Tyler Ennis declares March 27, 2014
• Jerami Grant declares April 14, 2014
• Chris McCullough declares April 2, 2015

Sanction Dates:

• March 6, 2015: Reduction of 12 scholarships over 4 year period
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2015-16
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2016-17
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2017-18
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2018-19

• December 2015 NCAA announces reduction to 8 lost scholarships and will accept Syracuse plan to use 3 scholarships in 2014-15 (so the adjusted penalties)
  • 3 scholarships lost in 2014-15
  • 2 scholarships lost in 2015-16
  • 2 scholarship lost in 2016-17
  • 1 scholarship lost in 2017-18

Syracuse Roster Size:

• 2013-14 roster of 12 scholarship players (Gbinijie, Cooney, Ennis, Grant, Fair, Christmas, Keita, Coleman, Roberson, Patterson, BJ, Obokoh)
• 2014-15 roster of 10 scholarship players (Gbinijie, Cooney, Christmas, McCullough, Coleman, Roberson, Joseph, Patterson, BJ, Obokoh)

Why no Jaquan Newtown in the 2014-15 class?

• Very simply we prioritized Kaleb Joseph over JaQuan Newtown in the summer of 2013. Kaleb was ranked a bit higher (overall and as a point guard). There was not a chance to take both. They were both in the same class and both signed on the same day with respective schools. If Joseph was a miss he was missed by all other major recruiting services too.
• As seen above, the 2013-14 roster consisted of 12 players and only two were seniors (Fair and Keita). Ennis and Grant were expected to return and did not announce until March and April of 2014 (well after recruiting season was done).
• The 2014-15 roster would have been 12 under the assumption Ennis and Grant returned and Joseph and McCullough joined the team
• If we took Newtown as the 3rd point guard it would have been an unnecessary PG luxury. Additionally, the option to take any scholarship reductions in 2014-15 upon NCAA appeal would not have existed. We would have been at 13 scholarships. Taking a 3 scholarship reduction a year early was actually a very good result.

Why no Jalen Brunson in the 2015-16 class?

• Follow the timelines once again and it’s easy to see why he may not have been prioritized.
• We enter the 2014-15 season with a 10 player roster with Christmas as the only senior.
• We have already gotten 4 commitments and all these commitments are early and well before Kaleb plays his first game in the 2014-15 season. There is no chance to evaluate in real game situations.
• 2 of these commitments are very early (Malachi and Lydon (Oct and Dec 2013) and occur before Ennis declares, before Grant declares). This is important as Jimmy and staff assume they already have two very good PG prospects on next year’s roster (Ennis and a highly recruited Joseph)
• By the time Ennis declares (which surprises the staff and they express their disagreement with his decision) the ship has sailed with Brunson and he has a prioritized list of 5 that does not include us. Who knows if we tried to get back in but top tier players usually have enough top tier interest and ignore last minute begging.
• Remember this is the season sanctions hit (March 6, 2015).
  • Post sanction BJ and Patterson announce transfer March 22, 2015
  • McCullough declares April 2, 2015
• When all things shake out the roster size sits at 10. NCAA penalties result in loss of 3 scholarships for 2015-16 so having 10 is the only number that can work. Only later did we find out the Diagne was ruled ineligible and in December we received a reduction in scholarship losses.
• However, after the March 6, 2015 penalties we could not have been higher than 10 scholarships so there was no room at the inn for Brunson!

When you look at the whole situation it becomes a lot more complicated. Simple saying the staff missed the boat on these key recruits does not take into account the scholarship situation and the timing of various announcements. You simply can't just look at a kids recruiting class and bemoan our missing out without understanding the detail. Can’t argue with Quade crap but that is a different story.

Cuse!

I understanding what you are saying. I like recruiting services and their rankings because it gives you a general idea of how good kids are related to other kids in the class. This is not something Syracuse or any other school is focused on when evaluating kids. The reality is we look today and Newton is a much better player than Kaleb. I don't think that is debatable. We could have had either and we made the wrong choice. We did that with multiple other kids too (Chino/Buss/BJ/Frank) and that is how we get into this situation. We can talk all we want about BJ would have been great we ran him off or look at Buss he is shooting 40% from 3 now but the reality is for whatever reason none of those players worked here. As I said in a previous post you can make mistakes when you are projecting but if you make multiple mistakes then that is the problem. I think that is our issue, talent evaluation. I don't think it's that we can't develop kids it just that we are trying to put a square beg in a round hole sometimes (Frank Howard) or just miss on kids that weren't good enough. I would love to see a similar timeline for Monte Morris which is the one that still kills me. If we had done that right none of this would matter and we would be fine.

 

[cliftonparksufan]

but the reality is for whatever reason none of those players worked here. As I said in a previous post you can make mistakes when you are projecting but if you make multiple mistakes then that is the problem. I think that is our issue, talent evaluation.

I echo your thoughts but I also said in another posts (man, there is a lot of repetition here) that our current problems are due to multiple reasons, one of which is as you say.
Let's look at the issues and as far as I am concerned, it comes down to the NCAA and losing the scholarships. If we didn't have the sanctions, BJ might still be here, along with some others who could have turned into four year players. Plus, the problems you bring up wouldn't be as noticeable if we had the potential to have a 13 man roster yearly. A lot of schools has players that leave early and every school have players that don't work out for different reasons: injuries, class work, laziness, miss their girlfriends.

Also, only having two coaches on the road is part of the problem but wasn't necessarily the reason for Kaleb Joseph. Let's just say that everyone missed on that. Except for possibly Creighton.

In hindsight, with the issues we have experienced, was it best for JAB and Hop to continue with USA basketball. That could be the elephant in the room. Two Final Fours in five years will tell you they should have continued but others would definitely say they should have devoted their full attention to Syracuse.

 

[jdubs30]

Francis did a great job of touching on this on his pod - he concludes that the sanctions only really hurt us with Huerter, and even then it was more about how we dealt with the situation than it was about the actual sanction. We simply chose Kaleb over Newton and ignored Monte Morris.

Recruiting misses happen and sometimes they it works out for the best (Warrick) but we've had a stretch of 3/4 years of rough luck where we simply focused on the wrong guy and it's showing now - or the player development side has been bad.

 

[pfister1]

The OP does a great job of showing how complicated the roster building process is! But I think even that oversimplifies the process because the poster is left to use public commitment dates and such to draw conclusions about when the staff made its decisions on guys when it may have been that a scholarship that ended up looking like it was given to a guard wasn't the actual tradeoff for Brunson. It could have been that Brunson didn't get prioritized because we were going hard after a forward that we might not have gotten. After that became obvious it may have been reallocated to a guard that we could still get at a point that we were out of the running for Brunson.

I just think all of this stuff is way more complicated than anyone wants to acknowledge when they sit there and say we could have had this guy instead of that guy. It isn't a draft.

 

[billsin01]

Interesting to see all the dates laid out so I appreciate the original post. However, my feeling on this (which not everyone will agree with, obviously) is that the past few years have been a combination of factors:

Player development
Francis and others have mentioned, clearly hasn't been ideal. It's easy to point to BJ or Kaleb Joseph or whomever, but what about Lydon? I love Lydon and I agree he hasn't looked particularly healthy lately even though he's shooting lights out. But he started the season looking absolutely lost offensively. How is that? I don't know what the philosophy was there but if I were JB (not an agent, but his college coach) I would have been pleading with Lydon to add good weight (not whatever he did) and work on two post moves -- turn around J and baby hook. Up-and-under ... whatever. Instead Lydon seemed to be trying to figure out where to get to and what to do when he got it, mostly featuring bizarre-looking runners early in the season. That hurt. And any way you slice it we need to do better taking whatever players we have and getting true improvement year over year.

Recruiting misses
These things happen. If you're a JB apologist (like I am) then relax -- even hall of famers miss guys and have recruiting lulls (people forget that K had a pretty good stretch of good but not at all great or overly talented teams from the Brand/will avery group up until the last few years). It's OK. It's just a disappointment that we've had so many guys produce almost nothing and leave. Kaleb, Chino, Patterson ... It sucks.

Unexpected departures
If guys want to leave, leave. It's all good. But it's hard not to shake your head at the luck we've had with this the past few years. I would have sworn Ennis was a three-year guy even as he was playing well early in the year. Grant had a really unique athleticism but when he proved he had no ability to hit a 15-footer as a sophomore, I was absolutely thinking we'd get another year out of him. Fab exploded as a soph but still only averaged 8 ppg -- it's not like he didn't have a ton of room left for development. Richardson would have been a HUGE help this year and while we'll remember the UVA game forever, he was up-and-down the whole season. Dude shot 36.6% on 2-point FGs in conference play. Think about that for a minute. And, not to be a pr!ck, but he's logged less than 40 mins. total in the NBA this year. Is that really what he left for? Again, it's fine that he left, but I feel like I can objectively say that Fab actually going to a few more classes and he, Mali, Grant and ennis staying another year could have been beneficial to all parties. But, what are you going to do. At the end of the day it's fine but difficult to plan for.

 

[SBU72]

What many fail to realize is : RECRUITING AIN'T EASY! Other poster say why don't we get 4 star kids that stay, why can't we get the 3 star kids that blow up to be good. Some even say, what can't we get the 5 star kid. After all we're SU. Face it, I go back to my statement. Recruiting ain't easy. Get the 4 star, SU did but they left after they proved how good SU thought they would be. Get the 3 star who will develop, well, you only get so many scholarships and if you wiff on a couple, the whole tower of cards comes crumbling down. And there are only so many 5 star and face it, SU ain't a destination school. And despite all this, SU had been relatively successful and will be again despite the hiccup in the road.

 

[AZOrange]

Interesting to see all the dates laid out so I appreciate the original post. However, my feeling on this (which not everyone will agree with, obviously) is that the past few years have been a combination of factors:

Player development
Francis and others have mentioned, clearly hasn't been ideal. It's easy to point to BJ or Kaleb Joseph or whomever, but what about Lydon? I love Lydon and I agree he hasn't looked particularly healthy lately even though he's shooting lights out. But he started the season looking absolutely lost offensively. How is that? I don't know what the philosophy was there but if I were JB (not an agent, but his college coach) I would have been pleading with Lydon to add good weight (not whatever he did) and work on two post moves -- turn around J and baby hook. Up-and-under ... whatever. Instead Lydon seemed to be trying to figure out where to get to and what to do when he got it, mostly featuring bizarre-looking runners early in the season. That hurt. And any way you slice it we need to do better taking whatever players we have and getting true improvement year over year.

Recruiting misses
These things happen. If you're a JB apologist (like I am) then relax -- even hall of famers miss guys and have recruiting lulls (people forget that K had a pretty good stretch of good but not at all great or overly talented teams from the Brand/will avery group up until the last few years). It's OK. It's just a disappointment that we've had so many guys produce almost nothing and leave. Kaleb, Chino, Patterson ... It sucks.

Unexpected departures
If guys want to leave, leave. It's all good. But it's hard not to shake your head at the luck we've had with this the past few years. I would have sworn Ennis was a three-year guy even as he was playing well early in the year. Grant had a really unique athleticism but when he proved he had no ability to hit a 15-footer as a sophomore, I was absolutely thinking we'd get another year out of him. Fab exploded as a soph but still only averaged 8 ppg -- it's not like he didn't have a ton of room left for development. Richardson would have been a HUGE help this year and while we'll remember the UVA game forever, he was up-and-down the whole season. Dude shot 36.6% on 2-point FGs in conference play. Think about that for a minute. And, not to be a pr!ck, but he's logged less than 40 mins. total in the NBA this year. Is that really what he left for? Again, it's fine that he left, but I feel like I can objectively say that Fab actually going to a few more classes and he, Mali, Grant and ennis staying another year could have been beneficial to all parties. But, what are you going to do. At the end of the day it's fine but difficult to plan for.

You don't tell Lydon to work on post moves and then make him the 3...

 

[billsin01]

You don't tell Lydon to work on post moves and then make him the 3...

Why not? He's got the range to stretch the floor anyway and he's going to have a size advantage over most opposing 3s and not a quickness advantage over too many of them. He's already got the skills to play the high post. He's already a shooter with range. Not to mention I'm guessing Lydon worked on playing the 3, facing up and driving to the basket and look where that got him.

 

[AZOrange]

Why not? He's got the range to stretch the floor anyway and he's going to have a size advantage over most opposing 3s and not a quickness advantage over too many of them. He's already got the skills to play the high post. He's already a shooter with range. Not to mention I'm guessing Lydon worked on playing the 3, facing up and driving to the basket and look where that got him.

Because that's not what the 3 does in JBs offense. They work the baseline to arc area usually through screens. The 4/5 runs the hi/LO action. The biggest strategic mistake we made was thinking TL could play the 3 and AWIII the 2. It put Lydon in the worst position offensively and defensively. He should have always been the 5 and worked on the part of the game you point out. Honestly JBs loyalty to DC2 didn't help us this year. Having a BJ type 3 and Lydon/whoever at 5 would've been better. We have 3 fives on a 10 man roster (really 9 man)

 

[billsin01]

Because that's not what the 3 does in JBs offense. They work the baseline to arc area usually through screens. The 4/5 runs the hi/LO action. The biggest strategic mistake we made was thinking TL could play the 3 and AWIII the 2. It put Lydon in the worst position offensively and defensively. He should have always been the 5 and worked on the part of the game you point out. Honestly JBs loyalty to DC2 didn't help us this year. Having a BJ type 3 and Lydon/whoever at 5 would've been better. We have 3 fives on a 10 man roster

Agreed. I also feel like if you have what you think is a great tandem at C and you need the energy and athleticism of Robey, then finding a way to use Lydon effectively for stretches at the 3 shouldn't be that difficult. Regardless, it's pretty clear Lydon wasn't prepared to operate in teh post and wasn't terribly effective taking opponents off the dribble.