Did Michigan State Just Take Themselves Out Of Contention For Joey Hauser?

On Friday, Michigan State picked up a verbal commitment from Marcus Bingham. He’s a 6’10”, 195 lb. power forward in the Class of 2018, where he’s rated as a four-star prospect and ranked #79 in the country by the 247 Sports Composite system.

What makes this particularly interesting is that according to ESPN’s Jeff Borzello and the 247 Michigan State 2018 page, the Spartans now have four commitments for that recruiting class. Bingham is one of two top 100 prospects in the class, as well as one of two power forwards.

Thus, the big question: Did Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo just take the Spartans out of the running for 2018 big man and Wisconsin native Joey Hauser?

Hauser, the younger brother of current Marquette forward Sam Hauser, is listed at 6’8” and 210 pounds on his 247 Sports page. He’s slotted at #28 in the Class of 2018 according to 247 Sports’ Composite rankings, and Michigan State is one of four schools closely tied to Hauser as of late. Wisconsin, Virginia, and, of course, Marquette are the other three. Hauser went on unofficial visits to Wisconsin, Marquette, and Michigan State last weekend, so at least up until that point, all three were right in the forefront of his mind.

To be clear: Hauser would be the highest ranked recruit if he ended up heading to East Lansing to join the Spartans for college. Bingham just took that top spot from Foster Loyer (247’s #86), so you’d have to guess that Michigan State would be happy to have Hauser in that regard. With four freshmen already committed though, that has to be tilting towards a place where MSU is running out of scholarship space, and they’re already adding two top 200 power forwards for Hauser to compete with for playing time merely in his same recruiting class.

Maybe Bingham’s commitment means nothing. Or maybe it means we took one more step closer to Joey Hauser announcing he’s going to wear the blue and gold.