“There's no disasters that have happened”
Things got super-weird on the internet last weekend when five-star recruit Quade Green announced that he was going to play for the Kentucky Wildcats instead of the Syracuse Orange. SU had invested a lot of time and focus on Green, so not getting him felt like a huge loss, especially with such a thin 2017 class as it is.
Someone must have printed out your concerns and put them on Jim Boeheim’s desk because he was well aware of them when he stepped to the podium after Syracuse’s 101-59 win over SCSU on Tuesday.
Because of it, he had a message for Orange fans worked up about Green and the state of SU recruiting: Chill the fuck out.
"Let's cover one thing on recruiting because everybody seems to have lost their. … they think we're all done, I guess, with basketball in Syracuse all of a sudden. In 1995-96 we lost the best point guard in the country and we went to the Final Four that year. Let's not get too upset over a recruit or two. We've lost 50-60 recruits over the years. We'll continue to lose recruits. We've got commits from two very good players, which is pretty good. We'll continue to recruit.
"One thing that I think is misunderstood in recruiting, this is generically speaking, since I can't specifically talk about any recruit, but when you decide to recruit a player and you're going to wait for him, that's what you do. You can't keep other players involved because they want a decision. You make those decisions as you go along. We made that decision in 1995-96 (with Marbury), and we didn't get the player we wanted. The following year, the junior point guard (Sims) became a senior and we went to the Final Four. (Marbury) went to the NBA in one year. So I don't think we would have done any better had we gotten that guard. And we wouldn't have been able to recruit Jason Hart because he would have thought that guard would be here. In those days players stayed.
"It happens all the time. You lose many, many times. Many times we lose key recruits, or supposedly, key recruits. It happens every day and, uh, geez, we're still here. It's not a disaster. There's no disasters that have happened."
Syracuse Basketball: Uh, Geez, We’re Still Here.
