Marquette Recruiting: Joey Hauser To Miss The Rest Of His Senior Season

The hits just keep coming during Marquette‘s Finals Week.

On Monday, it was the announcement of the end of the on-campus fieldhouse plans in exchange for a smaller facility. On Tuesday, it was Wisconsin Basketball Yearbook’s Mark Miller reporting that Stevens Point star and Marquette signee Joey Hauser will miss the rest of his senior season at SPASH following ankle surgery.

As Miller reports, Hauser is expected to make a full recovery from the surgery, which I think it’s safe to say that means there’s no reason to not expect him to be dressed and ready to go for Marquette when November 2018 rolls around. Miller also reports that this is connected to the high ankle sprain that he suffered in SPASH’s football playoff game in the fall of 2016.

It is worth noting that Hauser had surgery on the same foot in August, but that was to correct a Jones fracture just below his toes. It was described as a minor fracture, and at the time, Hauser was expected to make a full recovery from that injury and be able to play in all of SPASH’s games this season. It is reasonable to wonder if the lingering issues from the football ankle sprain were somehow related to the Jones fracture occurring, given the overall mechanics of how a foot works. The August surgery was performed by Dr. Robert Anderson, who works with the Green Bay Packers as well as Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving in the past, and if he was giving Hauser a green light to rehab and return to action after the surgery, I can’t really doubt him all that much.

Hauser and his family were seated behind the bench for Marquette’s win over Wisconsin on Saturday, and from limited camera shots of the bench, he appeared to be in good spirits even though he most likely knew his high school career was already over at the time. Hauser is, of course, the younger brother of current Golden Eagles sophomore Sam Hauser.

Hauser is currently ranked #39 in the country according to the 247 Sports Composite system, which is a slight dip from #35 when the August injury occurred. He is the only official recruit for Marquette and head coach Steve Wojciechowski in the class of 2018, although 2016 top 100 signee Brendan Bailey is expected to complete his two year Mormon mission and join the Golden Eagles as a freshman at the same time as Hauser.

Marquette currently projects to have one scholarship available for next fall. It’s probably much too late to do anything about it, but MU also has a scholarship available to use right now. If Hauser had enough credits to be finished with high school right now, he could, in theory, enroll at Marquette for the spring semester, redshirt this season, make use of MU’s sports medicine program to rehab as well as get a jump on his collegiate academic career. Again, though, this is probably something that needs to be planned out much further ahead than this.

Here’s what MU’s scholarship situation looks like going forward: