‘Cuse In The Hunt For Fab Melo
Despite the academic year ending, there are some major storylines surrounding SU’s athletic department. There’s Greg Paulus returning home, both lacrosse programs competing at intensely high levels and ongoing draft status updates on Jonny Flynn, Paul Harris and Eric Devendorf. Well, maybe not so much on Paul and Eric, but it’s been a very exciting spring and the flavor of the month for May is the recruitment of Fabricio de Melo.
By now, you probably know the story – Melo’s a 7-foot incoming high school senior from Sagemont, Florida via Brazil with plenty of meat on his bones who hasn’t even played a game in the US, yet has already showed enough promise to garner scholarship offers from seven schools, including Syracuse. He made a trip to the Hill last weekend and, by all reports, was shown a great time not only by the athletics staff but also by SU students and fans.
Nobody’s sure on when Melo will commit – he was scheduled to visit the University of Florida this weekend with his coach, Adam Ross, and more visits are probable to appear on the calendar – but if he were to pick Syracuse, it’d be pretty fun for Orange fans to picture the back of the zone in 2010-2011. You’d have the 6’9″ Rick Jackson as a senior, 6’10″ DaShonte Riley as a sophomore, 6’10 Baye Moussa Keita and of course the 7’0″ Melo as freshmen, all top-15 players at their positions in their respective recruiting classes.
Given all that depth and the fact that Melo comes from outside the Syracuse pipeline of New York, New Jersey, New England and Philadelphia, the only way that not landing Melo would be a huge blow is if he were to join another Big East program (currently, UConn and Louisville are also in the mix). For a lot of SU fans, there may be no changing the disappointment caused by Flynn, Harris and Devendorf leaving early, but the long-term future of the program is looking very formidable.
