Reply to thread

Message

[QUOTE="Powellfan, post: 2757533, member: 4819"]
I agree with Ohmilax - my feelings on this are largely that Syracuse wants guys who want to play for Syracuse.  A lot of times that means the player has a connection to SU.  For a long time that strategy was rock solid as a lot of great players wanted to play for Syracuse.  Now that there are more teams, there are more options.  It's probably a lot harder to spot talent as well, Syracuse literally has players from Maine and Oregon and California.  The Mike Powell years were dominated by players from the northeast.

The game has changed and I think staff has struggled to make adjustments.  In regards to the the early recruiting phenomenon, they were in the middle - definitely didn't start the trend, but got in eventually. Some teams made concerted efforts to stay out of it and now are poaching from others. Kind of interesting to think about the ethics of the practice - better to recruit 8th graders, or poach a player who has been committed to a school for 2+ years? Both seem wrong, hopefully the new regulations fix those problems.

Would be interesting to look back on all this in a few years.  It seems like there have been A LOT of players who either transferred or decommitted from Syracuse in the last 2-3 years. Gaudet and Wisnauskas obviously sting a lot. Time has passed but highly ranked incoming freshmen like Chase Scanlan (Loyola) and Griffin Galinas (Michigan), also decommitted.  On the flip side, we've had some players leave that really haven't come back to haunt us - I thought Devin Shewell would be a huge loss but I don't think he made much of an impact at all for Loyola last year. Likewise for Gail Thorpe at Ohio State.
[/QUOTE]

Verification

What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?