I agree, but they did effect us at the time and a few years after. And, in that time, cheating was taken to a new level. That left us in the dust, in my opinion.
We are the only ones who were sanctioned twice and didn't get a new coach. If you don't think that had something to do with it you are being naive.
had
If you think complying with NCAA didn't have more to do with it, you are being obtuse (thank you Shawshank).
Cheating by other programs isn’t the only issue. It’s certainly not the biggest one
I agree with that, too. But, anyone expecting us to compete with Duke, Kansas, UK...or any of those high level cheaters doesn't understand what is going on. We can be in the second tier with effort and strategy by our coaches. I don't think we have a big time recruiter on this staff though. I think they are alright, but I don't think we have a Troy Weaver.
The argument for why the sanctions are still hurting us is that we lost recruiting momentum, which is really hard to get back. But that’s partially on JB. He wasn’t aggressive enough in recruiting during the early sanctions period. He should’ve expected guys would leave early or transfer, as they often do. We needlessly lost Kevin Huerter, an upstate kid who should’ve played at Cuse. We asked him to prep for a year but he reclassified and went to Maryland. Our coaches knew SU was very likely to win the appeal (they did) and/or some guys would leave, which is what happened (Kaleb Joseph and others departed). In fact we had to bring in two grad transfers that season (White and Gillon) and still had room. JB imo is way too lackadaisical in roster management and talent acquisition. He always thinks he can make it work, but the past 5-8 seasons shows otherwise, and yet he still hasn't really adjusted.
Destroyed was specifically past tense. They did destroy the teams from 2015 until the end of sanctions with the limited scholarships.
How many misses could we have backfilled, or how much depth could we have brought on over those years to fill those question marks had those scholarships been available to bring additional people on? How much did the sanctions tarnish Syracuse’s reputation to the non-fans? How were teams using it as a tool to recruit against them? It’s not a black and white issue.
I added more context, I didn’t mean to post before my comment was completed.
What doesn’t add up is someone acting like an action taken specifically to hurt a program didn’t hurt the program lol. Those issues don’t just magically float away the day after the sanctions expired. The results in those years lead to a decline in the programs position, which lead to less interest from top recruits who wanted to “win now,” which in turn leads to worse results and so on and so on. If those sanctions were never handed down, Syracuse is in a very different position. That doesn’t absolve the staff of their recruiting issues but you can’t just act like the sanctions had no lasting impact.
Not to mention Jalen Brunson and others who wanted to come here but we declined to pursue. The Brunson dropped-ball is just astonishing. And we never took advantage of the MCW family relationship with Marcus Zegerowski and instead pursued Jalen Carey. That’s a total evaluation mistake by the staff but those can happen. It’s all just incredibly frustrating.
Especially when the coach knowingly doesn’t use all his scholarships anyway
darius bazley
And look what happened when he finally did.
What? We haven’t played yet with a full one
