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Message: [QUOTE="two3zone, post: 2108513, member: 3651"] I think the 30k is nice, and while some kids may like that and want that, I don't think it's a big as a deal as we make it. The Melo Center has been open for 8 years now, it's not outdated but it's not the best, many teams have made improvements the past few years including teams that aren't even in our stratosphere. Again, nice to have and it is awesome, but others have better. We have hit some home runs with recruiting. Lydon, Battle, Mali but we've also had some bad luck, McCullough, and we've had guys who just didn't develop like Roberson. We've had some guys leave early but all programs of our caliber do, the issue is recruiting and scouting. Is Gmac a guy who should be in the spot he is? Are we hardcore recruiting like a Calipari and other schools? I don't know but will take Francis's word for it, JB doesn't go to high school games. That's a problem. My question is, why we weren't able to sign one top 100 guy this year when we had 5 spots open? Ok, one guy might be but is Canadian, but one? That's not acceptable and at the point we are at the blind trust we have is wearing thin with a lot of people. While I can name 100 great things about a basketball player coming to Syracuse, even as a fan I can name some big ones right off the bad about why it would be a bad decision to come here. Our National reputation was probably never higher than it was the year Wes was here up until MCW's final four year. Last year was nice, but in all reality it did nothing but give us something to brag about, it doesn't help that it was mentioned that "it was questionable that we were even supposed to be there" every single game in the tournament. We don't recruit nationally and we're losing guys that are in our wheelhouse and when teams like Nova changing the tide in recruiting it doesn't help. We've had a ton of great Philly guys come through here, fast forward to now, why would a Philly kid want to go to Syracuse over Nova? That hurts, if Nova was what it is now, does Scoop, RJ, and Waiters end up here? Who knows, they may have, but take away one of those guys from the teams they played on and we're in the spot we are now. I've gotten the reputation around here of being negative and saying that the walls are crashing down but none of this should be a surprise by the way recruiting has gone as a whole the past 4 years. We're targeting guys who had no business being offered, we're recruiting for positions we really don't need more than others and seems like we're picking names out of a hat. Look at it this way, if Howard doesn't come back, we have ONE guard on the roster next season and that's Battle. If Howard comes back, we still need another guard who can play 20 minutes a game and play it well, we know what guard play means to this game, especially our zone. We can all hope and mark it in pencil that everybody will improve but our recent history shows that we cannot count on that. We're incredibly thin next year and an injury to a guard away from playing walk-ons even if we get another two to commit. I want to say the future is bright, but right now we need a Melo impact player, a guy who can put his team on his back and carry us to a future, Carmelo did that, if we don't have a Melo like player then we're really going to have to do a almost error free job recruiting. [/QUOTE]

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