Our list of the Top 100 SU athletes continues with a high-flying, slam-dunking, Big East-slaying Orange forward.
You can find the Fizz’s SU Top 100 list here. Make sure you keep checking in to see who made the list and where they are ranked!
Much like SU basketball great, Carmelo Anthony, C.J. Fair was born in Baltimore, Maryland. When the forward got to Syracuse in 2010, the program was thriving. Fair fit in nicely as a reliable scorer from the paint and from distance.
In his sophomore season, Fair was a part of an incredibly talented squad that made a fairly deep tournament run. There were six players on that year’s Orange that would go on to play in the NBA. Though he wasn’t given the same amount of minutes as some of those guys, he showed his worth whenever he was on the floor. That year he averaged 8.5 PPG with 5.4 RPG in 26 MPG.
His junior season brought wins as well as highlights. SU finished the regular season with 23 wins and brought that momentum into the Big East tournament. That season it was all the more special, as it was Syracuse’s last season playing in the conference they’d called home for 34 years. They faced none other than Georgetown in the Semi-Final. That season Georgetown had a pretty stacked squad, but C.J. simply didn’t care. He channeled some major bounce to put Player of the Year candidate, Otto Porter on a poster. SU went on to win in overtime. That season the Orange made the trek to the final four as well, the first time doing so since winning the national championship in 2003.
Fair will always go down as one of the most consistently productive players in SU history. He certainly deserves a spot on this list, as he was one of the best players on some of the best teams in SU basketball history.
