New Syracuse men's basketball coach Gerry McNamara has quite the task in front of him this offseason. Not only in terms of helping Syracuse improve from its 15-17 record this past season, but also in terms of just simply building a roster at all.

Almost immediately after getting the job at the end of March, McNamara was faced with the realization that he may need to replace his entire starting lineup in 2026-27.

William Kyle III and JJ Starling are graduating. When the transfer portal opened up last week, point guard Naithan George and power forward Donnie Freeman jumped in. The eligibility situation for Nate Kingz remains unclear. 

SU has done a nice job in recent days of landing a handful of portal commits, but the job isn't done yet.

As for the outgoing players? Bench player Tyler Betsey recently committed to BYU and George is off to ACC-rival Pitt. Freeman hasn't made a decision yet, but reports indicate he's visiting Kentucky on Wednesday and could be at UConn after that.

At 6'9, Freeman is now a rising junior. He's a very talented player, but that talent never translated to wins for the Orange.

In his two seasons in Central New York, he averaged 15.3 ppg and 7.5 rebounds, all while shooting 48.4 percent from the floor. He averaged 16.5 ppg in 2025-26.

On the positives, he represents everything about modern-day offense. With his height, he has the ability to play in the paint if he needs to, but he also is capable of shooting the three-pointer (30.2 percent this year), or taking a defender off the dribble.

On the negative side of things, he played a lot of isolation ball with the Orange. Is that because he's a ball dominant player that doesn't play as well inside of a system, or is that because Syracuse's offense didn't really have a system other than "let Donnie make plays?" That's for his next school to figure out.

Former Syracuse standout Eric Devendorf, who called games for the Orange this past season, made his opinion on Freeman known on a recent episode of the "Orange Zone."

"What he was doing on the floor numbers wise, it didn't equate to winning games..those are called empty stats." 

Devendorf also said that defensively, sometimes Freeman was "lackadaisical sometimes in the rotation, just energy and effort." 

He did say that Freeman is extremely talented, calling him Syracuse's best player, and indicating there is a bright future for him as he continues to grow.

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