Rakeem Christmas Listens To Trevor Cooney, Chooses Syracuse

Sorry, not gonna do a "Christmas In August" headline.  Nope.  Not gonna do it.

That said, there is a cause of celebration today as Rakeem Christmas, the No. 1 center in the class of 2011, has verbally-committed to play for the Orange.

"I had a lot of great options, but I fell in love with Syracuse," Christmas told Fox Sports' Jeff Goodman. "I know a lot of the guys on the team and that made a difference in my decision. I also felt that I could fit in well with their system."

According to Goodman, Christmas ultimately chose Syracuse over Georgetown and Florida International. At the beginning of July, Adam Zagoria reported that Christmas had narrowed his list down to Georgetown, Florida, Florida International, Texas and Oklahoma, with Rutgers trying to get in the mix.

Someone better get fellow 2011 SU recruit Trevor Cooney a finder's fee (and by finder's fee I mean an NCAA-sanctioned pat on the butt).  Once he committed to the Orange, Cooney made it his mission to get Christmas to commit as well.  Cooney was also trying to get Anthony Davis to join him but I don't think he had $100,000 handy.

Thank Rob Murphy for this one, he was the point-man on the recruiting press.  Pretty amazing job considering SU wasn't even on his short-list as recently as June.  As you can imagine, the Hoyas are less than pleased.