Syracuse Basketball: More blue-bloods enter recruiting fray for 5-star target

Taylor Bowen, a five-star wing and a consensus top-30 prospect in the 2023 class who has interest from Syracuse basketball, is seeing his recruitment expand, with scholarship offers and interest from a range of blue-blood teams and recruiting heavyweights.

The 6-foot-8 Bowen, a junior at the powerhouse Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H., recently said on Twitter that Kansas has offered him a scholarship.

That’s on top of the already intense competition that the Orange faces if it wants to pick up a commitment from Bowen down the road.

His offer sheet is extensive and growing. Those that have offered Bowen include Dayton, Marquette, Southern California, Maryland, Penn State, Connecticut, LSU, Arkansas, Providence, Rutgers, Iowa, Vermont and George Mason, according to media reports and recruiting services.

Syracuse basketball will have to beat out blue-blood squads for five-star Taylor Bowen.

In addition to Bowen’s current offers, media reports and recruiting services suggest that he holds interest from juggernauts such as Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State and Florida State, among others.

To that end, as we noted in a recent column, Bowen has detailed in a couple of interviews of late which college teams are reaching out to him the most, at least for the time being anyway.

Those groups include Kansas, Kentucky, UConn and Arkansas. Kentucky has absolutely crushed things on the recruiting trail in recent months.

Kansas is, well, Kansas. Lately, both Connecticut and Arkansas have added some excellent high-school prospects, and the Razorbacks also made the Elite Eight of the 2021 Big Dance held this past spring.

In short, the Orange coaching staff has its work cut out if the ‘Cuse hopes to emerge as a significant contender for Bowen, who was placed at No. 19 across the country in the 2023 class by the industry-generated 247Sports Composite when I penned this article.

On October 2, 247Sports national analyst Dushawn London tweeted out that Bowen was taking an unofficial visit to Providence, a solid Big East Conference squad.

In mid-September, Syracuse basketball coaches, including head coach Jim Boeheim, made a trip to the Brewster Academy to see Bowen and several of his teammates, according to media reports.

The ‘Cuse has picked up a handful of Brewster Academy players in recent seasons, so let’s see if the Orange can get some momentum going with Bowen, who is a top-10 small forward in the 2023 recruiting cycle.