Has Arizona Removed Themselves From Consideration For Quentin Grimes?

On Tuesday night, Jahvon Quinerly announced that he was committing to play for Arizona and head coach Sean Miller. Quinerly is ranked #15 in the country by 247 Sports’ Composite system and he’s ranked as the #4 point guard in the class of 2018. His commitment gives Arizona the #1 recruiting class in the country right now, as they also have commitments from two more top 40 prospects, including Brandon Williams, who is also listed as a point guard.

Why does this matter? Well, last week Thursday, just six days ago, top 25 prospect and #5 point guard Quentin Grimes included Arizona (and Marquette) in his top seven schools.

For a brief split second last night after Quinerly’s announcement, Grimes had a tweet up that seemed to indicate that his top seven was now down to a top six, but the tweet was quickly deleted. Regardless of Grimes’ intentions towards the Wildcats, it seems unlikely that Arizona would be interested in adding the #5 point guard in the country to their recruiting class when they already have #4 and #10 lined up to enroll.

This hardly means that Marquette is now the favorite to attract Grimes. Kentucky and Kansas are still looming out there with the Jayhawks controlling all seven of his 247 Sports Crystal Ball predictions right now, and Texas A&M, Baylor, and Texas are all in-state options for the Houston area product. However, it could mean that Marquette is a step closer to at least getting Grimes to make an official visit to Milwaukee. Shortly after his commitment, Grimes told Scout’s Evan Daniels that he intended on taking visits to Kansas, Texas, and...... wait for it...... Arizona. If Grimes isn’t interested in sharing the court with Quinerly, or if Sean Miller isn’t interested in adding another point guard to his team, then that’s one of Grimes’ five allowed official visits that’s now up for grabs. It’s simple math: four schools fighting it out for one of three remaining visits instead of just two.

For the record, here’s what Grimes told Daniels about Marquette:

Coach Wojo, he has just been at every game. He’s front line. They’ve almost been four deep at every game. They really show me that they want me to be a priority. They got Joey Hauser and I talked to him a little bit on the adidas circuit and they really loved my style of play and that I’m the type of guard to get them to a Final Four. So they told me I would be put in right away. That it would be my team from day 1 and just throw me in the fire and really try to lead them to a Final Four.

I feel we should point out that Quinerly was choosing between Arizona and Villanova, so shoutout to the Wildcats out in Pennsylvania for blowing that and leaving the door open for Grimes to end up at Marquette.

This brings us to the point in our program where I have to say that, as of August 9th, 2017, Marquette does not project to have a scholarship open for the fall of 2018.

That is a projection, though, and based on Steve Wojciechowski and all three of his assistants turning up front and center for Grimes’ adidas Uprising games after Joey Hauser made his commitment, it seems easy to also project that Wojo expects to have a scholarship available a year from now. Not in the “we’ll make space” kind of way, but in the “we already know that Player X Not Named Andrew Rowsey will not be with the program in 2018” way.

That’s how it looks to me, at least. While I understand the concept of “Always Be ‘Crootin,” there’s a difference between “keeping in touch with top 100 guys just in case” and “getting all four coaches to all of a top 25 prospect’s grassroots summer tournament games to show him how serious we are.”

For now we wait, though, as Grimes will have to recalculate how he wants to use his official visits.....