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Syracuse Basketball Recruits Enjoy Midnight Madness, Meet Carmelo, Meek Mill, and Tweet About It

By Dan Lyons

While Midnight Madness is a nice way to bring the fans back into the fold and get them ready for the upcoming basketball season, the most substantive benefits of holding this event for many programs have been on the recruiting front.  Kentucky is known for landing big recruits on the heels of its Midnight Madness almost every year.  

Syracuse's Midnight Madness this year, was a huge hit with the big recruits who were in attendance, as evidenced by how much they tweeted about it.  

Meet Your Tweeters:

@MooMoo25: Jerami Grant 

@NerlensNoel3: Nerlens Noel 

@Goodlucko_12: Goodluck Okonoboh

@tdot_ennis: Tyler Ennis

@_isaiah11: Isaiah Briscoe

Let's take a look at their impressions:

 

I have a few thoughts about how Midnight Madness went as well.  I'm not going to do a whole breakdown of the events, because it's pretty hard to gauge anything beyond "whoa, that was cool" from a scrimmage, but there were some things worth mentioning:

  • I loved all of the new tricks that the Dome pulled out for this event.  We had the "batman-style" block S beamed onto the Dome.  We had smoke machines aplenty.  We had spotlights.  There was a big time feel to Midnight Madness this year, which is not something we've been able to say in the past.
  • Tone Loc for Meek Mill was the trade of the century.  I didn't think MM's set was all that great (he was lip syncing the whole time, right?), but just look at all of those tweets from the recruits.  They seemed more excited about meeting him than Carmelo.  
  • I'm jealous of those of you who are long term Syracuse fans, because I couldn't really appreciate the Legends Game as much as you guys could.  "Old school Syracuse basketball" for me was watching Jonny throwing ridiculous passes and Devo shooting threes and laying it up with his left hand.  It was awesome to see guys I'd only previously heard about or seen on YouTube, like John Wallace and Lawrence Moten, and I can only imagine what a thrill it was for long-time fans to see those guys take the floor.  This was a special event, and it's probably not something we'll ever see again.  
  • I dare you to find one person in the Dome on Friday who didn't get chills when Carmelo came out.  As I'd tweeted earlier in the day, I knew that he was going to be there ahead of time and it was still a total thrill. 
  • If James Southerland ever puts it together, he is going to be a special, special player.  He just oozes athleticism.  
  • It's apparent that everyone put in a lot of work this summer.  Dion looks slimmed down and more explosive. Triche and Kris look stronger.  Melo lost a ton of weight, and looks so much more athletic than last year.  A whole extra year of basketball is huge for him.  If CJ's jumper is something that will be a consistent threat this year, he's going to make "The Jump", I have no doubt.  
  • I'm so excited about Michael Carter-Williams.  He can shoot, he's a great athlete (see: the posterization of Fab), and he can still fill the pass-first point guard role.  I don't know how much run any of our freshmen are going to get this year, because we have so many veterans on the team, but I definitely think all three can step in this year, if necessary, and produce.
  • I don't expect to see much from Rakeem Christmas offensively this year, he's really raw, but he looked like a really fluid athlete who should be able to play solid defense this year, and score on put backs and whatnot.  That's all we really need from him at this point.  
  • Trevor Cooney's three-pointer off the screen, where he took one step to face the basket and drilled the shot, was a thing of beauty.  He has a great stroke, and a quick release.  

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