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On Monday, Class of 2018 shooting guard Tyler Herro committed to Wisconsin.
Why should we care about this?
Well, Herro attends Whitnall High School in Greenfield, a suburb of Milwaukee. That makes him the second recruit from Milwaukee County to commit to a non-Marquette school since the start of August. Granted, Terrence Lewis, now committed to Iowa State, is a Class of 2017 recruit, so at least they’re not in the same class.
On top of that, Herro is a top 60 recruit in the class. ESPN has him as the #25 recruit in the class, while Scout’s most recent rankings slot Herro at #42. 247 Sports’ Composite system says that Herro is the #55 recruit in 2018, and the #2 recruit in the state of Wisconsin.
On top of that, we know that the Marquette coaching staff has been out to see Herro a bunch, including this past Friday when assistant coach Brett Nelson made the short drive to Greenfield. Herro has also been to the Marquette campus, most recently on August 29th for an unofficial visit.
So, yeah, it’s kind of a drag that a kid that talented is leaving the area instead of going to Marquette. It’s even more of a drag that he’s choosing Wisconsin over Marquette. Generally speaking, I don’t care where a high school basketball player chooses to go to college. It’s a big decision and there’s a lot of pieces moving there, and they need to make the best choice for themselves. However, when a kid voluntarily chooses to experience college basketball at fewer than 65 possessions a game - either in Madison or in Charlottesville, VA - that tends to make me scratch my head.
With all of that said, it doesn’t actually matter that Herro chose Wisconsin over Marquette, regardless of how much effort head coach Steve Wojciechowski put in to recruiting him over the past year or so. If you click on the ESPN and Scout links two paragraphs ago, you’ll see that Wojo and his staff have a number of top 100 options that they’re working on for two years from now.
That’s another thing to think about. Herro just started his junior year of high school. Anybody remember any stories about Wisconsin natives who made a verbal commitment to Wisconsin before the December of their junior year but ended up playing at Marquette anyway? It’s not an unfamiliar tune....