Syracuse basketball watching 4-star priority, No. 1 ranked Team Takeover

The various shoe-sponsored AAU circuits are holding events this weekend amid an NCAA live period, and it seems that Syracuse basketball will be in attendance to watch a 2024 four-star priority target from Washington, D.C., according to a media report.

Per a tweet from recruiting analyst Jake Weingarten, the founder of Stockrisers.com, the Orange, Alabama and Michigan are expected to be in over the weekend for four-star junior big man Donnie Freeman.

The 6-foot-9 Freeman, one of the top power forwards across the country in his class, recently took an official visit to the Hill, and at least one report said that trip went quite well. He has visited, whether officially or unofficially, numerous other schools throughout his recruitment, including Alabama.

Freeman picked up a slew of regional and national honors for his terrific junior year during the 2022-23 campaign while starring for St. John’s College High School in D.C., which was a nationally ranked team this past season.

Syracuse basketball is recruiting 2024 four-star power forward Donnie Freeman hard.

Freeman, in grassroots basketball, plays for the Washington-based Team Takeover in Nike’s EYBL league. Last summer, while competing for Team Takeover and playing “up” a division, he was a key contributor as Team Takeover made it all the way to the final game of the EYBL’s prestigious annual Peach Jam tournament.

As the EYBL and the other shoe-sponsored AAU leagues are holding sessions this weekend, college coaches are able to watch recruits in person during an NCAA-permitted live period from April 21 to April 23.

EYBL’s session this weekend, by the way, is being held at the LakePoint Champions Center in Emerson, Ga.

Oh, and when the high-school hoops experts at The Circuit recently published their first top-25 rankings of the grassroots basketball season, Team Takeover checked in at No. 1 within the 17U division.

Besides Freeman’s recent official visit to Syracuse basketball, not long before his trip to Central New York, Orange head coach Adrian Autry traveled to our nation’s capital to meet with Freeman.

In his junior year, Freeman has taken official visits to the ‘Cuse, Alabama, Texas and Iowa. I’m curious to see how much of a factor Michigan is, or ends up becoming, in Freeman’s recruiting process.

He is a consensus four-star, top-60 national prospect in the 2024 class, and when I penned this column, the industry-generated 247Sports Composite ranked Freeman as No. 27 across the country, No. 4 at power forward and No. 1 in D.C. within the junior cycle.

I do think that when it comes to his recruitment, Syracuse basketball has a lot of things working in its favor. For one, Freeman just had a positive official visit to the Orange. The ‘Cuse coaching staff has recruited him for a long time, offering Freeman a scholarship back in August of 2021.

Freeman’s AAU squad, Team Takeover, has a lot of connections to Syracuse basketball. Alumnus of Team Takeover includes sophomore forward Benny Williams and freshman wing Justin Taylor.

Both Autry and new assistant coach Brenden Straughn previously were coaches for the Team Takeover program.

At the time of this writing, On3’s recruiting prediction machine had the Orange with a slight lead over Alabama in Freeman’s recruitment.