Syracuse Basketball: 4-star Elijah Moore not in top 100, and I don’t get that

Call me biased if you want, but I simply don’t understand the massive national ranking disparities for Syracuse basketball 2024 four-star commit Elijah Moore, an elite shooting guard from New York City.

The 6-foot-4 Moore, who verbally committed to Syracuse basketball in late January over other finalists Alabama, Arkansas, Miami and Oklahoma State, just checked in at No. 52 nationally and No. 10 at shooting guard, according to updated 2024 national ratings from 247Sports.

He’s also in the top-60 overall, per Rivals.com. And the two industry-generated rating systems, the 247Sports Composite and the On3 Industry Ranking, both have him inside the top-90 nationwide as well as a top-20 shooting guard.

All of that, to me, is logical. And I readily admit that I’m not a recruiting analyst or a scout. But I’ve covered Elijah Moore for a while now, and between his stellar play in high school as well as on the AAU circuit, I feel like he’s a lock as a top-100 national prospect and should push the top 50.

In recent months, numerous recruiting experts and scouts have echoed those sentiments to me, for what it’s worth. Oh, and tons of fellow Syracuse basketball fans are in the same camp as me when it comes to Moore’s rankings.

Syracuse basketball 2024 four-star commit Elijah Moore is vastly underrated.

ESPN recently updated its top 100 for the 2024 cycle. Moore didn’t make the cut. For some context, ESPN has him as four stars, with a scout grade of 80, which puts him just outside of the top 100.

What puzzled me even more, frankly, is that ESPN rates Moore as the No. 37 shooting guard around the country in the senior class. I just don’t see how there are 36 “better” shooting guards than him in this cycle.

MADE Hoops, meanwhile, presently has Moore at No. 126 in the 2024 class. Respectfully, I think that’s too low. Full disclosure, I really like the analysts and scouts at both ESPN and MADE Hoops, and they’ve been good to me in providing context for various recruiting stories of late.

So this column is not meant to trash either recruiting service whatsoever. I’m simply stating my opinion that Orange pledge Elijah Moore should be a consensus top-100 player, and I’d argue that he’s easily a top-50 prospect.

Here’s why. As a junior during the 2022-23 season at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, N.Y., Moore was named to the New York state Catholic High School Athletic Association “AA” All-League first team.

In the most recent AAU season, as a standout for the 17U team of the Bronx-based Wiz Kids in the Adidas 3SSB league, Moore averaged 19.6 points, 3.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game, while connecting on a stellar 46.3 percent from beyond the arc.

The Circuit, as a result, named Moore as its offensive MVP on the 3SSB circuit during the most recent grassroots basketball campaign.

Word recently broke that Elijah Moore would spend his senior year in the 2023-24 stanza at the Our Saviour Lutheran School in the Bronx, which is part of the Atlanta-based professional league Overtime Elite.

Assuming that Moore fares well in Overtime Elite, where he should receive even more national exposure, I would hope that every recruiting service out there puts him in the top 100 of the 2024 cycle, if not much higher than that.