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Amaya Finklea-Guity was sitting in the Syracuse video room this past summer when she realized this wasnt going to be like all her other interactions with college coaches.This was going to be about instruction and improvement, not promises and promotion.Orange coach Quentin Hillsman was showing tape that illustrated his vision of her career at the upstate New York university when, suddenly, he asked Finklea-Guity to stand up.He proceeded to show her some tips on how to avoid foul trouble by not swinging her arms and by doing a better job of moving her feet laterally.It was as if Hillsman had read her mind. On the plane ride from her home in Boston to Syracuse, she had told her mother, Paula Guity, she wanted to stop fouling so much.What Coach Q did definitely made an impression on me, said Finklea-Guity, a 6-foot-4 senior center and the No. 42 prospect in the espnW HoopGurlz Top 100 who last season led Noble & Greenough (Dedham, Massachusetts) to the New England prep school Class A championship.I felt he was ready to work with me and push me to be better. It was a cool moment.It was also a winning moment for Syracuse because thats when Finklea-Guity decided she would be joining the Orange program. Then again, Syracuse has been doing a lot of winning lately. The Orange went 30-8 last season, reaching the NCAA final before falling to Connecticut. Before last season, the Orange had never advanced past the tournaments first weekend.Last month, Syracuse (7-3) nailed down what is being hailed as the best recruiting class in program history. In addition to Finklea-Guity, the Orange signed Nikki Oppenheimer, a 5-9 combo guard at Montini Catholic (Glenview, Illinois) who represented Puerto Rico at the FIBA Americas U18 championships in Chile; Diaby Kariata, a 6-5 center from Voiron, France, who has represented the Ivory Coast in international competitions; Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi, a 6-2 forward and three-star recruit from Paris who played for France at the 2016 FIBA U18 European championships in Hungary; and Digna Strautmane, a 6-2 forward from Rigas, Latvia, who is ranked 23rd in the Top 100 and played for her national team at the FIBA U20 European championships in Portugal.I think our program is in a good place, said Hillsman, whose team will graduate five seniors this season, including four starters. When you get to the NCAA title game, you are right there. I think we just needed perimeter shooting, size and versatility, and this class addressed that.Size and speed in onePaula Guity, whose parents were born in Honduras, has raised Amaya on her own. For years, Guity put her daughter in just about every after-school activity imaginable, from swimming, to tap dancing and tennis.I was trying to find her niche, Guity said.Ultimately, Finklea-Guity outgrew dance -- literally. After seeing she was the tallest girl on stage, she asked her mother to try something else.A friend told Guity that the AAU Boston Showstoppers were looking for a center. Even though Finklea-Guity, who was 11 at the time, had never played basketball, the Showstoppers took one look at her height and immediately said yes.There was a tournament the next day, and the Showstoppers coaches were yelling out instructions to their new center, teaching her the game on the fly.The coaches told her, Just put your hands up, Guity said. So Amaya did that and just stood there. She didnt realize she had to run up and down the court until they yelled at her again.Then when the opposing point guard came down, and Amaya blocked her shot, she thought that was the greatest thing.She had found her niche.Finklea-Guity, who has a 3.5 GPA and is interested in studying computer engineering, chose Syracuse over 25 other scholarship offers. Harvard and Brown were among the colleges recruiting her. But Finklea-Guity wanted to play for a national title, and she thought Syracuse gave her that chance.Hillsman sees in Finklea-Guity a prototypical post player who can score over either shoulder. But he also sees a player with uncanny speed.Shes as fast as any high school post player Ive ever seen, Hillsman said. Speed and quickness comes down to your will. You can be fast, but if you dont have the will to run hard every time down, it doesnt matter.Amaya always puts pressure on the other post because of how fast she gets up and down the court.Finding a shooterOppenheimer, who is set to play for Puerto Rico this summer at the U19 world championships in Italy, will certainly help with any shooting issues.She is the daughter of Josh Oppenheimer, who played nine years of pro ball in Europe and is now an assistant coach with the NBAs Houston Rockets. Josh taught his daughter the proper shooting form during her earlier years, and it stuck.Oppenheimer committed to Syracuse in October of 2015, thoroughly enjoying her visit with Hillsman and his staff. But the deal was sealed when she and her mom took a quick detour to the local mall.While trying on sneakers at a Foot Locker, Oppenheimer was asked by the salesperson what made her come to Syracuse. When she explained she was a potential Orange recruit, the salesperson had an immediate reaction.She said, Oh, I love Coach Q, Oppenheimer said. She had been a team manager at Syracuse, and to hear her say so many good things about him just showed he was good to the people around him and that he was a genuine person.That just confirmed what I was already thinking.Oppenheimer, who has a 4.3 GPA and is interested in becoming a sports agent, has drawn praise of her own. Her AAU coach, Dave Yates of Midwest Elite, calls Oppenheimers jumper pure.Its one of the best shots Ive seen in 10 years of coaching girls, Yates said.Because she was the first player in her class to commit to Syracuse, Oppenheimer is called the anchor of the group by Hillsman. But shes more than that.Nikki played point guard on her AAU team and off the ball in high school, so she knows how to adapt, Hillsman said. We all know she is a phenomenal shooter. But shes also deceptively quick, she can get to her spots, and shes very intelligent.Project EuropeAfter Hillsman got commitments from Oppenheimer in 2015 and Finklea-Guity this past July, his next move was to recruit a recruiter.Adeniyi Amadou, a native of Paris, had come to the U.S. as a teenager to play basketball and go to school. By 2009, he had transitioned to coaching, and he landed a job as a Syracuse graduate assistant.From there, he became an assistant coach at Dayton and then at Kentucky before Hillsman called his former GA and said two simple words: Come home.Amadou accepted his mentors offer, bringing with him expertise in working with post players but also vast international recruiting connections. When Amadou was hired on August 16, Syracuse had no commitments from players overseas.Hillsman told Amadou what he needed -- size and skill. Amadou gave his boss a list of 12 players he thought could fit, and Hillsman then had him focus on the three or four he had actually seen and liked, either on tape or in person in trips to European competitions.The only problem was that other schools had already been recruiting the players Syracuse now wanted.We were late, Amadou said. But I knew enough people in Europe, and the relationships were so strong, we were able to make up the ground.The two players from France committed first, Kariata in mid-September and Djaldi-Tabdi a couple weeks later.I had known both of them for a long while, Amadou said. The coaches knew me, and that made things easier. The credibility was there, and the fact that I am French helps as well.Amadou had no such home-country advantage in Latvia, but he worked his contacts and got Strautmane to commit in October.I didnt have to sell them on Syracuse, Amadou said. They knew we had good people.In the end, Amadou said, Syracuse landed three international kids who would be much more highly rated had they played high school ball in the U.S. and had been seen by more scouts.These are girls who practice twice a day and compete against grown women, pro players, Amadou said. We dont get caught up in rankings. But I know weve done well. Cheap MLB Jerseys Authentic . Vettel, who has already clinched his fourth straight F1 title, enters the finale with a chance to equal Michael Schumachers 13 victories in a year and match the record of nine consecutive wins by Alberto Ascari in the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Cheap Reds Jerseys China . 10 Texas A&Ms offence dominated as usual against SMU. http://www.cheapredsjerseys.com/?tag=cheap-barry-larkin-jersey .S. Open champion Justin Rose birdied the first hole with a blind shot he hit to a foot of the pin, and he stayed in front Tuesday until he completed a 4-under 67 for a two-shot lead over Jason Dufner in PGA Grand Slam of Golf. Cheap Tom Seaver Jersey . Detroit and Boston are deadlocked, 1-1, and Tigers manager Jim Leyland could be forgiven if he was caught rationalizing instead of dissecting how his club could blow a 5-1 lead late in Game 2. Cheap Tony Perez Jersey . Vokoun departed practice on Saturday morning after discovering swelling in his thigh. He was taken to a local hospital where the clot was revealed. The club announced the surgery following a 5-3 exhibition loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets. If there is one man responsible for the sumptuous buffet of college football on the menu for this weekend, it would be Dave Brown, who has been to college football scheduling what LeBron James is to the Cleveland Cavaliers -- the one person indispensable to the subject at hand. Brown may have a low profile outside the business of the sport. But few people in intercollegiate athletics can get a phone call to an athletic director or head football coach returned faster than Brown.Brown for years was in charge of scheduling college football games for ABC and ESPN (he now is a consultant on college football scheduling with proprietary software that makes the complicated business much easier for his clients). As such, the remarkable array of nonconference games during Kickoff Week -- including Alabama-USC, LSU-Wisconsin, Texas A&M-UCLA, Georgia-North Carolina, Clemson at Auburn, Notre Dame at Texas and Florida State-Ole Miss -- are by and large the work of Brown and the staff with whom he worked at ESPN.People will always put themselves out there and play one really big game, Brown said. Thats it in a nutshell. Thats what happened.Well, thats not exactly what happened. Take LSU and Wisconsin playing Saturday at Lambeau Field (ABC, 3:30 p.m. ET), the home of the Green Bay Packers. They originally were scheduled to play next season. The Badgers had been scheduled to play Virginia Tech in Week 2. Virginia Tech agreed to move a home-and-home with Wisconsin to 2019-20, 11 years later than the two programs first agreed to play. By the way, that freed up the Hokies to play Tennessee in the Battle at Bristol in Week 2. Tennessee was supposed to play Nebraska on Sept. 10. However, that home-and-home is now scheduled for 2026-27.Your head starting to hurt yet?We had to move around a lot of things to get it done, Brown said.There are logistics and there is desire. A tip of the hat to the College Football Playoff is necessary here. The CFP selection committees emphasis on schedule strength has dissolved the objecttions of coaches against playing difficult nonconference opponents.dddddddddddd It can be like feeding spinach to children -- not many of them ask for seconds.You cant ask people to do something thats over and above what everybody else is doing, Brown said. Everybody else is playing one tough nonconference game? Thats what you can ask people to do.You call and you ask, you listen and you call back, you propose and maybe you wheedle. You call and you ask again. Brown has earned the trust of coaches to the point that they would call him to complain when they didnt like ESPNs coverage, which was not at all his bailiwick and put him in an awkward position. But he is the first to recognize the limits of what he can achieve.They really want seven home games, Brown said. Out of 12 games, with four on the road in the league, you are dealing with a pretty fixed set of scheduling parameters. You cant call somebody up and say, Do you mind going down to five home games? You dont even ask those kinds of questions.So you figure out which buttons to push. Texas A&M wanted to showcase the newly expanded Kyle Field. UCLA is coming to College Station, the first time the teams will play in the regular season in 61 years.The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, which lost its ACC-SEC matchup when it became part of the New Years Six bowls, wanted to bring the two leagues together in its Kickoff Game. Hello, North Carolina and Georgia this year (and Alabama and Florida State next year).And the Crimson Tide wanted to open against a nonconference opponent at a neutral site, and is doing so for the fifth consecutive year (Michigan, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Wisconsin, USC). Note that list of opponents completes the full set of other Power 5 conferences.You put the puzzle together, and sometimes you get a piece of art that hangs in a museum. Thats what Brown did for the opening week of the 2016 season. ' ' '