With Syracuse basketball on hand, 4-star and 5-star DMV targets light up scoreboard

This weekend, the Syracuse basketball staff has descended upon our nation's capital, and several other sites, to check out recruiting targets in various classes as prospects suit up for their high school programs during a scholastic live period.

Per a source, the Orange has been in attendance at DMV Live, which is transpiring at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C. This market is a key recruiting hotbed for the 'Cuse, as several Syracuse basketball coaches have deep ties to the Washington metropolitan area.

Two 2026 targets who have shown up, and shown out, this weekend in Hyattsville are five-star wing Qayden Samuels and four-star point guard Neiko Mundey. Prior to games occurring on Sunday, both players were in the top five in scoring, with Samuels at 28.7 points per contest and Mundey at 25.0 points per affair.

Based on X posts, on Sunday morning, Samuels tallied 16 points in one game. It doesn't look like Mundey's high school team was set to play on Sunday, per the DMV Live schedule.

Syracuse basketball 2026 DMV recruits are balling out.

The 6-foot-3 Mundey, a standout at the Prince George’s Christian Academy in Landover, Md., landed a 'Cuse scholarship offer around the time that he attended the Orange's annual Elite Camp in late August of 2023.

Syracuse basketball coaches have been in attendance for Mundey at various settings, including at his high school and on the AAU circuit, where this grassroots hoops season he has starred for the 17U team of the Washington, D.C. area-based New World in the Adidas 3SSB league.

I'm hopeful that Mundey, a top-55 national prospect in this class according to 247Sports, will take an official visit to the Hill at some point in the future.

The 6-foot-5 Samuels, a top-10 national prospect in the 2026 cycle per ESPN, has seen his recruitment blow up. North Carolina recently offered him, for one, and fellow blue-blood program Kentucky is showing an interest in Samuels, who was offered by Syracuse basketball in July of last year.

Samuels is a standout with Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Md., and the 17U unit of the D.C.-based Team Takeover in Nike’s EYBL league, an AAU program where Orange head coach Adrian Autry and assistant Brenden Straughn both previously served as assistant coaches.

Toward the beginning of this year, Samuels said that he was eyeing a potential visit to the 'Cuse, so let's see if that happens. Syracuse basketball appears to be putting on a full-court press for Samuels, watching him during a live period in mid-May on the AAU circuit, earlier this month at the National Basketball Players Association ("NBPA") Top 100 camp in Rock Hill, S.C., and this weekend at DMV Live.