When the 35th-best hooper in the country, Tyus Battle, pulled up to join the Syracuse basketball team in 2016, there were immediate and long-term expectations for the 6-foot-6 New Jersey native to exceed ordinariness before his tenure in central New York came to a close.
Battle, the fourth scoring option for a Syracuse team that failed to reach the NCAA Tournament in 2017, averaged 11 points on less than nine shots per game in year one.
Despite his mainstream scoring output, it was his clutch genes that made the departures of Tyler Lydon, John Gillon, and Andrew White in the summer of 2017 somewhat feasible for Orange fans.