Syracuse Basketball: 5-star Zion Cruz delays reveal, some predictions shift

Five-star combo guard Zion Cruz, an elite prospect in the 2022 class who holds a Syracuse basketball offer, won’t be announcing his future college choice for a bit longer, he said on social media.

The 6-foot-5 Cruz was set to make his decision known this past Sunday afternoon, but he said in an Instagram post that he was delaying his announcement due to an unfortunate circumstance involving a family member.

First and foremost, I sincerely hope that Cruz and his family member are okay. Cruz said via Instagram that he would disclose another commitment date in the upcoming weeks.

According to media reports, just prior to Cruz’s planned commitment announcement on Sunday, his finalists were Atlantic Coast Conference member North Carolina, Southeastern Conference team Auburn and Big East Conference participant Creighton.

Previous media reports indicated that Cruz originally was going to announce his college pick on August 19, but that plan got postponed.

I’m not a recruiting analyst, nor am I in Cruz’s inner circle, so I don’t think it’s appropriate to speculate on anything. We’ll have to see how his recruiting process plays out.

Analyst predictions are split for Zion Cruz, who has a Syracuse basketball offer.

According to most recruiting services, Cruz is deemed a five-star, top-20 prospect nationally in the 2022 class. However, ESPN did recently place him much further down when it updated its 2022 ratings.

Cruz is heading into his senior year at The Patrick School in Hillside, N.J., and he runs on the AAU circuit with the Bronx, N.Y.-based PSA Cardinals.

Throughout his recruitment, he has obtained more than 20 scholarship offers from a variety of high-major programs. Besides the Orange, North Carolina, Auburn and Creighton, his other offers include from Oregon, Arizona State, Florida State, Baylor, Illinois, Ohio State, Iowa, Alabama, UCLA, Connecticut, Louisville, Maryland, Seton Hall, St. John’s and Indiana.

Earlier this summer, Cruz visited Auburn and Oregon. For a while now, Auburn has been the rumored leader for him, at least as far as projections from national analysts and recruiting insiders go.

As of Monday evening, when I penned this column, Auburn still had several predictions in its direction between the 247Sports Web site and Rivals.com. However, a couple of these analysts have also logged projections for Cruz to the Tar Heels.

Perhaps this recruiting battle could turn into a two-team race for Cruz.