Syracuse Basketball: How Canadian recruits keep the Orange afloat
Syracuse basketball head coach Jim Boeheim has a reputable history of recruiting impending, dominant Canadian talents. Quincy Guerrier is the latest example.
The Canadian legacy and everlasting impression that Toronto, Ontario’s Tyler Ennis and Leo Rautins, and Montreal, Quebec’s Kris Joseph have left on the Syracuse basketball program are manifested through the three hoopers being to this day, household names in both Central New York and the country that lies two hours north of it.
Toronto, Ontario’s sophomore standout Oshae Brissett and recent Syracuse commit, and Montreal, Quebec native Quincy Guerrier, are continuing the trend of Canadian hoopers exercising their control over college basketball’s most fierce conference, the ACC.
While the majority of college basketball programs have created a paradigm that deems Canadian players inadequate at the Division I level, the Orange have reaped the benefits.
A common misconception that has, up until recent years, been embedded into the basketball world is that the Canadian players who make it are products of prep-school basketball in the United States.
Syracuse Orange
Despite this, Athlete Institute Basketball Academy has verified that this narrative is changing. Former lottery picks and current NBA mainstays Jamal Murray (seventh-overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft) and Thon Maker (10th-overall pick in 2016), coupled with the multitudes of Division I athletes the school develops every year, this institution in Mono, Ontario has put Canada on the basketball map and also aided Syracuse’s recent success.
Brissett, Orange point guard Howard Washington, and Georgetown’s Jahvon Blair all made memorable impacts at the collegiate level during their freshman years in 2017 when their names were called upon.
Even Rautins, who joined Syracuse in 1980, highlights the historically committed nature Orange head coach Boeheim has had towards Canadian hoopers. The rightfully lauded coach, who has been at the helm of Syracuse basketball since 1976, took a chance on Rautins in just his fourth year as a coach. But it was a chance he’d never regret.
The impact Brissett has already made on the Orange is easy to overlook. In his freshman year, he played nearly 40 minutes a night, averaged 15 points and nine rebounds, and helped guide Syracuse to a Sweet 16 appearance in March.
What makes this already notable freshman output even more impressive is the fact that he shot 35 percent from the floor during the 2017-18 season.
Ahead of year two, Brissett has been mentioned in the same breath as 2019 NBA Draft lottery prospects and he has been named to the Julius Erving Award watch list.
Who’s to say that Guerrier, who also played prep school basketball in Canada at Thetford Academy, can’t do the same once he arrives in Syracuse next season?
247 Sports, who listed the 6-foot-7, 190 pound small forward as a four-star recruit, possesses similar size and skill to some of the Orange greats that preceded him including Carmelo Anthony and Jerami Grant.
Guerrier, much like many Canadian-bred talents that preceded him, was left off of ESPN’s Top 100 for the 2019 class. A list that includes guard Brycen Goodine at No. 69, who committed to Syracuse in September of 2017.
Brissett and Guerrier both committed to the Orange in similar fashions.
In November of 2016, Brissett committed to Syracuse during halftime on national television. Sitting in the broadcast booth with Orange alum Rautins, Brissett announced his decision during halftime of a Toronto Raptors and New York Knicks game, a time when another Syracuse alum, Carmelo Anthony, was a member of the Knicks.
On Wednesday night, Guerrier committed to the Orange, in his home city of Montreal, in RDS’s TV studio during the halftime show of the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers game.
Brissett was only a three-Star recruit out of high school, while Guerrier doesn’t even have a profile on ESPN.
Canadian players have always shined when the least was expected of them. Don’t be surprised when Guerrier produces in ways that the mainstream college basketball world never saw coming.
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With their latest addition from Canada, the connection between Syracuse and the talent produced north of the border is currently stronger than ever.