Syracuse Basketball: 4-star Elijah Moore not in new rankings, that’s absurd

ESPN has published its top-100 national rankings for the 2024 class, and the recruiting service didn’t include Syracuse basketball four-star commit Elijah Moore. I simply don’t get that.

I mean this column with no disrespect whatsoever to ESPN. I’m a big, big fan of ESPN recruiting director Paul Biancardi. I also acknowledge that I’m not a recruiting analyst or a scout.

What’s more, these sorts of recruiting rankings are metrics I use regularly as context for my stories on Orange targets. But these rankings are subjective, they should get taken with the proverbial grain of salt, and they don’t always tell the full story about a particular high-school prospect.

With all of that as a backdrop to this column, I have in recent months conversed with various national recruiting analysts about the 6-foot-4 Moore.

He had a strong junior year for his high-school team in New York City, and several experts told me lately that they thought Elijah Moore could make a run at the top 50 in the 2024 cycle. So for him to not be in ESPN’s top 100 is really, really surprising to me.

Syracuse basketball 2024 four-star commit Elijah Moore is a top-75 national prospect elsewhere.

In ESPN’s new rankings, there are multiple ‘Cuse targets within this top 100, and we’ll dive into that soon in another column.

As far as Moore goes, he is one of the top long-distance shooters in the junior cycle and a four-star shooting guard according to all of the other primary recruiting services besides ESPN.

He is a standout for Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, N.Y. Elijah Moore helped lead Cardinal Hayes to the New York “AA” Archdiocesan tournament title earlier this year, and he was named to the 2022-23 New York state Catholic High School Athletic Association (“CHSAA”) “AA” All-League first team.

Looking ahead to the 2023-24 campaign, multiple high-school hoops analysts and writers have projected Cardinal Hayes as a preseason top-25 squad. In grassroots basketball, which is just getting underway across the various shoe-sponsored circuits, Elijah Moore competes for the Bronx, N.Y.-based Wiz Kids in the Adidas league.

Not too long ago, he received high praise for his play for the Wiz Kids at the 2023 KYDA Invitational in Scranton, Pa.

While Elijah Moore has often been cited for his exceptional 3-point shooting, he’s clearly developed his all-around game, displaying athleticism, versatility, solid rebounding, defensive prowess and keen court vision, experts have said.

In late January, Elijah Moore verbally committed to Syracuse basketball over other finalists Alabama, Arkansas, Miami and Oklahoma State.

At the time of this writing, Moore was rated at No. 85 or better by all of the other main recruiting Web sites. The industry-generated 247Sports Composite had him at No. 85. Elijah Moore was No. 73 at the industry-generated On3 Industry Ranking, No. 61 at Rivals.com, No. 66 at 247Sports and No. 75 at On3.