Syracuse Basketball: Blue-blood gets a prediction for 5-star Jarace Walker

Syracuse basketball may have been one of the first squads to offer a scholarship to 2022 five-star forward Jarace Walker, with that offer arriving in June of 2020, but several other teams seem to have generated the bevy of buzz lately as it pertains to his recruitment.

We recently penned a column in which we detailed that Eric Bossi, the national basketball director for 247Sports, said that Auburn, Michigan and fellow Atlantic Coast Conference foe North Carolina are the three schools “working him the hardest.”

Now, does this mean that the Orange is out of the running for the 6-foot-8 Walker? Well, he hasn’t come out with any sort of official group of finalists that I’m aware of, so even though things may seem a bit bleak for the ‘Cuse, you never know how things will transpire until a high-school player trims his list or reveals his ultimate choice.

In any event, I’ve read a bunch of articles on Walker’s recruitment in recent months, and it does appear that the Tar Heels are in a strong position with him.

Syracuse basketball 2022 prospect Jarace Walker is universally rated five stars by recruiting Web sites.

By extension, at the end of last month, Jamie Shaw put in a FutureCast prediction on Rivals.com for North Carolina as it relates to Walker, who is one of the top all-around players on a national scale in the 2022 cycle.

Prognostications from analysts and other recruiting insiders are always intriguing, but I do often take them with a grain of salt. The recruiting business is so fluid, and things can change one way or another really, really fast.

For what it’s worth, I’m not seeing any Crystal Ball predictions for Walker on the 247Sports Web site. So to declare the Tar Heels as a possible front-runner for him is one thing, but to suggest that North Carolina is the clear-cut favorite is probably a tad of a stretch.

Walker is a junior at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., which is one of the premier prep-school teams around the country. The majority of primary recruiting services rank him as a top-10 overall prospect within the 2022 class.

Most Orange fans that I interact with on social media are adamant that Syracuse basketball has little to no shot at landing Walker. That could be entirely the case at this point in time. Walker would certainly shine in Central New York, though.