Syracuse Basketball: New ranking of 2025 4-star target a bit puzzling to me

Dorian Jones is a 2025 four-star shooting guard from Ohio who received a scholarship offer from the Syracuse basketball coaching staff in late August.

He’s inside the top 30 within his class, per 247Sports. When On3, another one of the primary recruiting services, recently updated its top 150 for the junior cycle, it placed Jones at No. 115 overall, No. 30 at shooting guard and No. 2 in Ohio.

I’m the first to acknowledge that these sorts of recruiting rankings are subjective and will vary from recruiting service to recruiting service.

And if you’ve followed my coverage of Syracuse basketball recruiting, you’d know that I have nothing but love and respect for the On3 team. So this column isn’t a jab at On3.

I’m merely making an observation here that Jones being rated No. 115 nationally in the 2025 class is a little puzzling to me. That national ranking, I believe, is too low.

Syracuse basketball faces tough competition for 2025 four-star shooting guard Dorian Jones.

When I wrote about the 6-foot-4 Jones in late September, I noted that 247Sport had recently refreshed its own 2025 national rankings, putting him at No. 28 overall, No. 5 at shooting guard and No. 2 in Ohio.

Again, I say this respectfully, but that seems like a huge disparity. One recruiting Web site has Jones outside the top 100 overall, while a second has him inside the top 30.

At his position, he’s No. 30 at one site and No. 5 at another. To reiterate, this is just an observation here. Those are immensely large gaps.

According to an article from SyracuseOnSI publisher Mike McAllister after the ‘Cuse coaching staff offered Jones, McAllister wrote that as a sophomore for Richmond Heights High School in Richmond Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland, Jones averaged 20.0 points, 7.1 rebounds, 3.0 steals and 1.7 blocks per game.

By the way, in 2022-23, Richmond Heights sported a 29-0 record and finished with a top-25 national ranking, per MaxPreps. Some high-school hoops analysts deem Richmond Heights as a preseason top-25 squad ahead of the 2023-24 stanza, when Jones will be a junior.

Over the spring and summer, he earned high marks from national analysts and scouts as he performed at a strong level for the 16U team of the Columbus, Ohio-based All Ohio Red in Nike’s EYBL league.

Beyond Syracuse basketball, Jones holds offers from college teams such as Southern California, Illinois, LSU, Oklahoma, Houston, Michigan, Rutgers, Missouri, Dayton, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Michigan State, Xavier, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Ohio State, Toledo, Cincinnati, Cleveland State and Arizona State.

Media reports have indicated that the Orange could be in line to receive a visit from Jones at some point down the line, which would prove huge if the ‘Cuse hopes to prevail in his recruitment.