Marquette Basketball Recruiting: What Are The Golden Eagles Getting In Ike Eke?

Back in June of 2016, Class of 2017 power forward Ike Eke made a verbal commitment to Marquette men’s basketball.

At the time, Eke was not ranked by 247 Sports in their Composite rankings or in their in-house rankings. Rivals was the only one of the four major recruiting services to assign him a rating, marking him has a three star prospect.

Even now, Eke still looks like a bit of a project in need of development. 247’s Composite ranking has him at #326 in the class, while their internal system has him at #276. ESPN, Rivals, and Scout all have given him a three star rating, but he’s unranked on their systems. At least I think that’s him on ESPN. Right high school, right size, wrong name, no commitment.

However, “in need of development” doesn’t necessarily mean “can’t contribute immediately.” Over the weekend, Eke participated in The Mitten Classic, an all-star event for the best players in Michigan. Now, MASSIVE DISCLAIMER because it’s an all-star event so I don’t know how serious these guys were taking things.

BUT.

Show of hands, who expected Ike Eke to knock down threes with relative ease? I sure didn’t, not after watching the highlight video we included in the article about his commitment. Lots of running the floor and finishing with dunks in transition there, lots of rebounding and put backs, and hey: I was pretty comfortable with that being Eke’s only contributions immediately, especially the rebounding. Long range shooting? Didn’t expect it. Shot looks pretty smooth, he seems pretty comfortable taking it, there’s a lot to like there.

Eke also had this contribution to the dunk contest, going over Marquette target Greg Elliott.

That’s pretty neat, given Elliott’s about 6’4” or so. However, it’s not as neat as this dunk by Eke, and while you’ll never see it in a game, it does say a lot about Eke’s confidence in his own athleticism and agility.

Look, I’m not ready to pencil Eke in for 20 minutes a night come November or anything. It does look like he’s going to be able to contribute a little something immediately, though, and you can’t really ask for more from a freshman.