They say everything is bigger in Texas, and apparently that includes high school basketball.
Advanced Prep International of Dallas, Texas may have the best high school basketball team in the nation. Trevon Duval, the No. 4 player in the 2017 class and a Syracuse target, announced he’d transfer to API Monday and leave St. Benedict’s Prep of Newark, New Jersey. He joins Terrance Ferguson (#10 in the 2016 class) and Billy Preston (#6 in the 2017 class) and will be coached by Ray Forsett (who coached Emmanuel Mudiay). They’ll do all right.
For Syracuse, recruiting Duval just became a lot more difficult. People forget in the Internet Age how much distance matters. The Orange can call and text Duval all day long, but it’ll be a lot harder for him to make the drive from Texas to Syracuse than New Jersey to Syracuse. Teams closer to Duval will have an advantage in recruiting, and Syracuse doesn’t have nearly as many connections in the South.
Duval’s new teammates could try to push him elsewhere, as well. Terrance Ferguson has already committed to Alabama, and while Billy Preston is looking at a number of different schools, Syracuse is not one of them. The statistics say Duval won’t end up in Orange, too. There isn’t a single scholarship player on this year’s roster from a state not touching the Atlantic Ocean. Syracuse may be taking the “Atlantic Coast Conference” a bit too literally. Either way, landing Duval just became a lot harder.
Posted: Nathan Dickinson
