Brendan Bailey Commits To Marquette

On Tuesday night, Class of 2016 small forward Brendan Bailey verbally committed to play for Steve Wojciechowski and Marquette University.

It's time to announce that I will be attending Marquette University to extend my career in Basketball. pic.twitter.com/CN4OkqczaG

— Brendan Bailey (@brendanbailey35) October 20, 2015

Hailing from American Fork, Utah, Bailey is a 6'7", 170 lb. small forward.  He's ranked #67 in the country by 247 Sports Composite, #91 by 247 Sports' internal rankings, #96 by ESPN, #48 by Rivals, and #43 by Scout.  That's a little all over the place, but the important thing is that he's a consensus top 100 player.

If you wanted to attribute this particular recruitment and commitment to one particular thing, it was Arizona State firing Herb Sendek.  Bailey had verbally committed to play for the Sun Devils 11 months ago, but with Sendek out, Bailey reopened his recruiting. Current Marquette assistant coach Stan Johnson was one of Sendek's assistants, and while Johnson had been retained by new ASU coach Bobby Hurley, Johnson jumped to the Golden Eagles when head coach Steve Wojciechowski was looking to fill a vacancy left by Mark Phelps taking an assistant's job at Arizona.  Had it not been for the existing relationship between Johnson and Bailey from their ASU connection, it seems likely that Bailey would have ended up choosing from Michigan, Utah, Gonzaga, or San Diego State, all of whom Bailey had visited over the last year.

The son of Thurl Bailey, a 12 year NBA veteran, Brendan represents the future of Marquette basketball in more ways than one.  Officially, for recruiting purposes, Bailey joins Sam Hauser in MU's 2016 recruiting class.  However, Bailey is being raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormon church.  Bailey is planning on taking a two year Mormon mission following his high school graduation, which means he won't be enrolling at Marquette until the fall of 2018.

To put it another way, this is what Marquette's scholarship situation looks like with Bailey arriving in 2018:

This is how much Bailey wants to play for Wojo: he's only going to ever play with the current freshmen on Marquette's roster and Sam Hauser.  On top of that, he's putting playing for Wojo ahead of whatever the Marquette coaching staff assembles for the 2017 AND 2018 recruiting classes.

Bailey can (and likely will) sign his national letter of intent in a few weeks along with Hauser, but all it represents is his commitment.  The NCAA only counts scholarship athletes based on people the university is actively spending financial aid money on, so he won't count as a scholarship player until he's actually on campus.

As you can see in the above graphic, Marquette still has one scholarship available for next fall.  Of course, that presumes that everyone is coming back, too, and with Henry Ellenson projected as a top 10 NBA Draft pick, that's up in the air.