For all the recruiting snafus and NCAA sanctions that partially defined the latter half of the 2010s for Syracuse Orange basketball, it’s easy to forget SU might’ve caught a break bigger than any misfortune suffered.
Syracuse originally lost Tyus Battle, ranked 27th in the class of 2016, to Michigan. In a stroke of rare Central New York fortune, Battle backed out, visited Syracuse and committed to Jim Boeheim’s squad.
Those teams did not evolve as expected. Jim Boeheim lost Taurean Thompson, Tyler Lydon, Darius Bazley, Matthew Moyer, Geno Thorpe (mid-season) — while Malachi Richardson bolted after the 2016 Final Four run.