ESPN Has Released New Basketball Recruiting Rankings

A few days ago ESPN released their new recruiting rankings for the classes of 2018, 2019, and 2020. Overall, things are going pretty well for Marquette when it comes to restocking the men’s basketball roster down the road.

The first thing that comes to mind when these rankings were released was how 2018 Marquette commit Joey Hauser would fare, and there’s good news. ESPN has stopped criminally underrating him at 49th in the country and bumped him up 8 spots to number 41. This is still lower than most ratings providers have him (247 Sports’ Composite has Hauser at #34) but it’s an improvement so I can’t really complain. It will be interesting to see if Hauser shifts in the rankings between now and the end of the year due to his foot injury, even though he is not expected to miss any games for Stevens Point. The only other player of interest for Marquette in the class of 2018 is 5 star point guard Quentin Grimes, who ESPN moved up all the way to the 13th best player in the country. As you may recall, Grimes included Marquette in his final seven schools, although the seven may actually be six now.

In the class of 2019, Marquette is involved with numerous players in the ESPN top 60. First and foremost would be Racine big man Nobal Days who checked in at number 60 on the dot. Days has been a Marquette target for some time now as they offered him a scholarship back in June of 2016. Days currently has two of his six 247 Sports Crystal Ball predictions favoring Marquette with the other four favoring the Wisconsin Badgers. Marquette has also just recently offered SG Tyrese Maxey who ESPN has ranked as the 17th best player in the class of 2019. Maxey may be a long shot for Marquette, though, as SMU recently hired his father. Marquette is involved with at least five more players ESPN has included in their top 60 for 2019, but with very few players cutting down their lists, much less making commitments, it seems we will have to wait and see who Marquette will really go after to replace Haanif Cheatham and Matt Heldt once they exhaust their eligibility in two years.

As for the class of 2020, there are only three student athletes ESPN has rated that have a Marquette connection right now, but hey, it’s only a top 25. The first would be small forward Jalen Johnson from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. ESPN loves him, ranking him as the 6th best player in the country. Johnson would obviously be a huge get for Marquette, both nationally and locally, but it is pretty reasonable to expect that any commitment for Johnson would be a long ways down the road. The other two players in the class to watch are third overall rated point guard Jalen Suggs and #22 ranked Nico Mannion. Marquette has had an offer extended to Suggs for quite some time now and Mannion’s father is close with the father of Marquette commit and current Mormon missionary Brendan Bailey. Mannion recently picked up an offer from Kansas, so it’s clear that head coach Steve Wojciechowski and his staff will have their work cut out for them there.

Overall, ESPN seems to be pretty high on the guys that Marquette is currently recruiting. This does not mean that these kids are all going to be superstars and the kids not rated by ESPN are all bums, and it definitely doesn’t mean that all of these guys will attend Marquette. However, when it comes to recruiting ratings I would rather have highly rated guys than non-highly rated guys, and it’s always good to see the recruiting experts agreeing with the MU staff on which guys are the most notable players.

Here’s what Marquette’s scholarship situation looks like over the next few years.