Syracuse Basketball: Brycen Goodine has surprisingly entered transfer portal

Syracuse basketball fans received some surprising news this week as guard Brycen Goodine has announced he’s entering the transfer portal.

With the 2019-20 Syracuse basketball season coming to a halt this week due to the novel coronavirus outbreak the offseason storylines have accelerated to the forefront.

On Friday evening Orange fans received some surprising news with an offseason storyline they didn’t know was coming, guard Brycen Goodine has announced that he will enter the transfer portal.

The news started to leak on Friday night and then it was confirmed by Goodine on social media:

"“I would like to thank the Syracuse staff and fans for having me at the University this year, however, it is time for me to seek out a new beginning. Thank you, Syracuse!”"

Brycen came to Syracuse with massive expectations as an ESPN top-100 recruit, but mostly flew under the radar during the offseason due to the splashier additions of Quincy Guerrier, Joe Girard III, among others.

In fairness, once the season rolled around Brycen struggled to adapt to the college game and quite frankly just looked uncomfortable when he got time on the floor.

Goodine’s struggles with playing time and execution would continue for weeks until one day in practice he ate an elbow from Elijah Hughes that shattered his nose. That also stunted his development as it took him out of commission on the court.

His early struggles opened up opportunities for other guys on the roster to take advantage and they did. Girard went from role player to starting point guard within the first handful of games and Buddy Boeheim established himself very early on as a scorer.

Despite his issues, Goodine actually turned a corner late in the season. He hit a game-winning bucket to beat Wake Forest in the dome, got better defensively, and found minutes on the floor through the last 10 games of the season.

If you would’ve told me that a guard was going to enter the transfer portal after the season I would’ve guessed Jalen Carey. So this news certainly comes as a surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have.

The harsh reality is Goodine only averaged 8.7 minutes per game this season. With JG3 and Buddy having years of eligibility remaining, Brycen was likely facing another challenging year just for playing time in 2020-21.

Kentucky, UCLA, Duke, and Kansas initially showed interest, per Matthew Gutierrez of The Athletic, before Goodine eventually selected the Orange.

Goodine now joins a recent trend of Syracuse players transferring away from the program. Others of note include Kaleb Joseph, Matthew Moyer, Taurean Thompson, and BJ Johnson to name a few.