When the Atlantic Coast Conference announced its preseason media accolades last week, Syracuse basketball redshirt junior forward Elijah Hughes didn’t receive the nod for either the All-ACC first or second team. Personally, I thought that Hughes got hosed.
This week, however, Hughes is garnering admiration, and it goes beyond the ACC and onto a national scale.
On Wednesday, the 20-player preseason watch list got released for the 2020 Julius Erving Award, which is doled out annually to the best small forward across Division I men’s hoops. Hughes, appropriately, is on this list, along with two other guys from the ACC in Duke’s Matthew Hurt and Louisville’s Jordan Nwora.