Ohio State Transfer Tori McCoy Chooses Marquette Women’s Basketball

Well, the article from earlier today got outdated in a hurry!

In fact, before our article speculating about Ohio State forward Tori McCoy considering transferring to Marquette even published, news came out on the Twitters that the Champaign, Illinois native had made her commitment to head coach Carolyn Kieger and the Golden Eagles.

Here’s a tweet from what appears to be Tim McCoy, Tori’s father, which was retweeted by assistant coach Ginny Boggess:

And here’s our tweet with the article.

Oops! This is what you get when you schedule tweets to spread content out a little bit, apparently. At least Carolyn Kieger had the respect to wait until after our article, even though she didn’t know it was going up.

Tori McCoy just completed her freshman year at Ohio State after finishing high school as a top 10 recruit and playing in the McDonald’s All American Game. The 6’4” forward appeared in all 35 games for the Buckeyes with 10 starts. She averaged 8.1 points and 4.9 rebounds in a shade under 17 minutes per game for an OSU team that reached the Sweet 16, but she’s transferring after a first year of college where her father says “she was miserable every day.”

McCoy was looking for a landing spot where she would get a chance to play “a versatile role,” and if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Carolyn Kieger’s team construction over the past two seasons, it’s that a 6’4” tall player who has anything resembling solid ball handling skills will fit in just fine. It also helps that Marquette was one of the finalists for McCoy when she made her original commitment to the Buckeyes, so she was already familiar with the staff and style of play, and vice versa.

As she just finished up her freshman season in Columbus, McCoy will have three years of eligibility remaining after sitting out the 2017-18 season as a transfer. This means that McCoy’s first season of eligibility as a Golden Eagle will be 2018-19, the senior year for the core group of Allazia Blockton, Natisha Hiedeman, Erika Davenport, Danielle King, and Amani Wilborn. I feel it’s important to remind you that it’s that core that led Marquette to a Big East tournament title as sophomores..... and then they’ll add a top 10 recruit when they’re seniors.

There is one bit of housekeeping for the Marquette coaching staff to take care of at the moment. Marquette doesn’t have an available scholarship for McCoy.

That’s what the scholarship picture going forward looks like, with 15 spots filled for this fall and 15 for the year after that as well. Presuming that McCoy is going to be on scholarship, MU will need to clear a spot for her. The solution that jumps out as a possibility is that Olivia Moskari doesn’t return from her ACL injury from this past season. Since there hasn’t been any announcement from the athletic department about anyone leaving the team, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

UPDATE: Noted Twitter enthusiast and friend of the blog @MarkKahnWI tracked down an available scholarship for this coming fall, as Chelsey Gibson is leaving Marquette with degree in hand and one year of eligibility remaining. That doesn’t solve Marquette’s scholarship issue for 2018-19, though, but technically, Chloe Marotta and Kaela Webb have not signed to play yet.