Well, things just got interesting. Syracuse offered 4-star power forward Kyle “Flip” Filipowski this week. The Wilbraham, Massachusetts native is 6’10”, 215 lbs., part of the Class of ’22, and light on his feet. No Syracuse recruiting site seemed to have Filipowski as a target of SU. It’s relatively late in the process since he’s developed relationships with multiple staffs and already has offers from a number of high-profile schools like Ohio State, UCLA, Stanford, Notre Dame, Louisville, UConn and Iowa. He has offers from another handful of Power 5 schools as well. When did SU jump into the fray? His coach Mike Mannix says… this week.
“I’ll be honest with you, it just started today. What Gerry said was they had been watching him for quite some time. They had been in touch with his AAU coach last year in Andy Borman with the Rens. So they’ve been talking about him for a while, they just hadn’t talked to him until (Wednesday). He had a Facetime call with Gerry and then coach Boeheim jumped on. That’s when it all picked up speed, he got his offer and all that stuff.” – Mike Mannix
Bold strategy, Orange. He’s a top 100 player in his class (#31 for the ESPN Top 60) and told 247 Sports last week he’s got Ohio State and Iowa on him pretty tight. He’s making recent waves in the recruiting waters.
“Skilled, athletic and plays with an edge. At last week’s NYC Invitational he was one of the event’s biggest standouts while playing with the New York Rens and he appears primed to make a big jump the next time we update the national rankings.” – 247 Sports on Filipowski
Flip says he will take the summer to figure out where to go. But Flip wasn’t on many radars in CNY before this week. Clearly the Orange have joined the party late, but have reason to believe there’s a chance. SU has recently tried to aggressively put together an enormous class. Flip was publicly fired up about getting the offer from Syracuse.
His head coach Mike Mannix sat down with SI.com. It was a positive reaction to getting the offer.
“He was pretty excited because Kyle texted me right after he got off the phone with Syracuse. He and I had just been on a video call like two hours before, so for him to reach right back out to me, it must’ve made him feel pretty good.” – Mike Mannix
Syracuse is joining the fray late, but early signs point to a mutual interest. Right now reports (and Kyle) say that the Buckeyes, Hawkeyes and Bruins are the leaders. SU doesn’t throw out offers meaninglessly, so McNamara must have good insight there’s some intrigue there from Flip. No one saw this coming, but it’s a good sign that Filipowski seems excited about the opportunity.
