At the time that he was fired in March, former Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry had not secured even a single high school recruit for the 2026-27 season.

New head coach Gerry McNamara changed that when he brought Ryan Moesch in, but the fact still remains: Syracuse has done well in the transfer portal in the last calendar year, but they have struggled to gain traction on the high school front after landing Kiyan Anthony and Sadiq White from the high school class of 2025.

McNamara is working to change that, and he's shooting high: According to his social media page, Syracuse has offered 2027 guard King Gibson of North Carolina.

As noted by On3, Gibson also has offers from Michigan, LSU, North Carolina State and North Carolina. He is ranked as the No. 2 player in the 2027 class, per the same outlet.

As of now, he stands 6'4, but there is obviously time for him to grow.

There's no two ways about it: Recruiting via the transfer portal is incredibly important for power conference programs. Programs, like Syracuse, who want to win at the highest level, benefit from having older and more experienced players on the roster. The more coaching that McNamara can do, as opposed to teaching freshman, the better. That's just reality. It's the same reason why the international recruiting market is so valued.

However, high school recruiting is still one of the major lifebloods of college basketball. The ability to bring in younger players and cultivate them within a program is an important skillset for any coaching staff. High school players provide upside for a program and (at times) come at a cheaper cost than those players acquired through the transfer portal.

And while maybe it's a romantic notion at this point, the hope would be that a player you recruit at a young age might be more loyal to a program than those transfer players that just drop in for a year at a time.

In the transactional nature of college hoops today, you never know how a roster is going to look year-to-year, nevertheless how it might look in two years.

That said, McNamara has brought in a number of transfers with multiple years of eligibility that still figure to be on the roster when Gibson would get to town.

Anthony and White will both be juniors by that time and would be the leaders of the roster - if they stick around.

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