Late Thursday night, Syracuse landed their first transfer portal commit in William Kyle III, who comes to the Orange with one season of eligibility remaining after playing a pair of seasons at South Dakota State and a third at UCLA. Kyle parlayed being named to the Summit League’s First Team and Defensive Player of the Year for the 2023-2024 season into a spot with the Bruins.

Now that the Bellevue, Nebraska native is heading east for his final season, what is SU getting with the addition of Kyle?

An athletic 6’9” forward-center, Kyle will provide energy, athleticism, and defensive commitment. Kyle was a fringe rotation player this past season with the Bruins, but logged 61.2 and 70.4 percent of available minutes in his first two years with South Dakota State. In his three years of play, three statistics pop off Kyle’s sheet – effective field goal percentage, offensive rebounding rate, and block rate.

Having never attempted a 3-pointer in collegiate play, Kyle is an inside operator, with just over 42 percent of his 551 career field goal attempts being listed as “far 2’s” at T-Rank. That rate also decreased each of his three seasons, showing a shift toward focusing on what he does well close to the rim.

As a result of that focus moving closer to the rim, Kyle’s effective field goal percent also increased each season, going from under 55 percent as a freshman to over 70 percent as a junior. In addition, 111 of Kyle’s 331 career field goals are dunks and his 28 dunks in just 312 minutes this season were more than double of any Syracuse player this year.

Most notable about Kyle’s 9.3 offensive rebounding rate this season was that it matched his mark the previous season against lesser competition. The rate did dip against higher-caliber opponents while with UCLA, so he will probably not be able to substantially improve there with the Orange and posting a similar mark would be a solid result.

Perhaps best for Kyle and SU is his block rate. Kyle’s mark increased from 5.6 to 6.7 to 8.9 over his three years of play. While he logged his best mark with UCLA this season, that rate was also higher against high-level opponents, reaching 10.3 in games against teams in T-Rank’s top 100. While he may not have the intimidating size of Naheem McLeod, Kyle exceeded the former center’s shotblocking production this season.

Kyle projects to have a fairly similar role at Syracuse as he did at UCLA, probably with a modest increase in minutes due to his rim protection ability. Joining Donnie Freeman, Petar Majstorovic (until known otherwise), and Sadiq White Jr. as big men on the roster, Kyle will likely slot in as a rotational player looked to provide energy on both ends. Playing time in the range of 15 minutes per game sounds likely and, if the Orange fail to add a clear starting center, it is possible Kyle starts without much of a change to that minute expectation, at least in a “starter in name only” fashion.

Perhaps more important will be to look at Kyle’s commitment after the season as a sign of how general manager Alex Kline and head coach Adrian Autry developed a plan to create a complete roster to play Autry’s preferred style of positionless basketball. Kyle fits that style as an athletic, rim-running player who can play both the four and five on defense while functioning as a screener and roller on offense to avoid cluttering the basket area.

Kyle will likely not have a massive impact on the floor, but how he fits as a piece of the whole for SU may be a bigger sign for the program’s direction under Autry and its new general manager.

----

Chat about this story and all things Syracuse and Syracuse recruiting on our premium message board, Cuse Classified!

Follow us on Twitter @TheJuiceOnline, like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram @SUJuiceOnline and listen to our podcast.

Tips/questions/concerns? E-mail Recruiting Analyst Charles Kang here.

Not a subscriber to The Juice Online? Join today for access to all our premium content and message board community.