Women's Basketball

Syracuse rounds out 2016-17 recruiting class with signing of 4 guards

Syracuse announced the signings of four players for the 2016-17 season on Tuesday night. Five-foot-10 guard Gabrielle Cooper out of Marian Catholic (Illinois) High School, 5-foot-9 guard Desiree Elmore from Hartford, Connecticut, 5-foot-10 guard Alisha Kebbe out of Neumann-Goretti (Pennsylvania) High School  and 5-foot-8 guard Kiara Smith from Forestville, Maryland will join the Orange next season.

The Dan Olson Collegiate Girls Basketball Report cites SU’s recruiting class as the 25th-best in the country, according to the release. Elmore is the only five-star recruit of Syracuse’s four signees to be and the Capital Prep (Connecticut) guard is slotted at No. 50 in the espnW HoopGurlz top 100. She’s the No. 13 ranked guard in her class, and is the first five-star espnW HoopGurlz top 100 ranked player to come to Syracuse since current guards Brittney Sykes and Brianna Butler did.

“She can do it all,” head coach Quentin Hillsman told Cuse.com. “She can score from all spots on the floor, defend four positions, and is extremely versatile. She scores in bunches and rebounds in traffic.”

Cooper and Kebbe were dubbed three-star recruits by espnW HoopGurlz and ranked the 25th-best guards in their class. Smith currently attends the same high school Hillsman did, Forestville Military Academy (Maryland). She missed the entire 2014-15 season with an injury according to Cuse.com, but Hillsman described her as a “big point guard with tremendous toughness.”

“Going into this class, we just wanted to make sure that we filled some holes,” Hillsman told Cuse.com. “As we look back on this class and the players that we have coming in, we definitely have players that can step in for us right away.”



 





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