Marquette Men’s Basketball Makes Recruiting Inroads With T.J. Moss & Terrence Lewis

With the July live recruiting period over and the fall signing period just three months away, I think it’s safe to say that we should be seeing some fairly important Marquette men’s basketball recruiting news on a regular basis. On Tuesday, the recruiting news rolled in with a report of an offer that Steve Wojciechowski made in the class of 2018 and a report that Marquette was in a final four in the class of 2017.

Let’s start with the scholarship offer. That went out to T.J. Moss, who attends East High School in Memphis, Tennessee.

Moss is a 6’3”, 175 lb. guard in the class of 2018. 247 Sports’ Composite system has him as a four star prospect and ranks him #76 in the country. Their internal system has him as the #31 recruit in the country and the fifth best shooting guard for 2018. 247 lists 11 scholarship offers for Moss, including Florida, Connecticut, and Memphis.

Here’s a two minute highlight reel of Moss from this past December.

The bigger news of the day is Marquette being one of the four schools that 2017 shooting guard Terrence Lewis is considering going forward, along with Illinois, UNLV, and Iowa State.

Lewis is a 6’5”, 180 lb., small forward who attends Riverside University High School, which is just a 15 minute car ride away from the Al McGuire Center in Milwaukee. 247 Sports has Lewis ranked as the #99 player in the Class of 2017 in their Composite system, but he is still a four star prospect.

It’s fairly impressive that Marquette is in Lewis’ final four. MU only offered a scholarship to Lewis in late July and less than two weeks later, the Golden Eagles are one of his four best options. I doubt you’ll get Lewis or anyone close to Lewis to admit that he was waiting for an offer from Wojo before making his cutdown, but it certainly looks like he’s very excited about the prospects of playing his college ball in his home town.

It’s also pretty important for Marquette to be in Lewis’ last grouping. It’s clear that Steve Wojciechowski is taking a national view of recruiting at Marquette. His two recruiting classes featured players from Florida, Pennsylvania, Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He already has one commitment for 2017 from a player from Michigan, and the top prospects for the next two years are from all over the place. It’s not going to make or break Marquette if Wojo isn’t getting players from Wisconsin.

However, Terrence Lewis is one of three Wisconsin prospects in the class of 2017 that are graded at four stars or better by the 247 Sports Composite system. The other two are Jordan Poole, who is committed to Michigan, and Kobe King, who made his verbal commitment to Wisconsin way back before Bo Ryan quit his job. If there’s top 150 prospects - like Lewis - in the state of Wisconsin, it makes things so much easier for Marquette and Wojciechowski when it comes to recruiting and program building. It’s not just the ease of being able to watch these guys on a regular basis, it’s the constant recurring notion that if you’re one of the best players in Wisconsin, there’s a spot for you at Marquette. It’s getting the newspapers in Green Bay and Stevens Point and Appleton to put Marquette stories in the sports section because the local kids are going to school there, which in turn builds more awareness of all the best Wisconsin players going to Marquette.

It’s been four straight years where either the first or second best player in the state of Wisconsin chose Marquette for college. Terrence Lewis will continue that streak. Like I said, it won’t make or break Marquette if Lewis opts for one of his other three options. But it would certainly be good for Marquette to keep that streak going.

(h/t @MarkKahnWI & @PaintTouches)