Marquette Women’s Basketball Has A Commitment From Taylor Valladay

We’ve talked about it in the past, and it continues to be true: Women’s college basketball recruiting news just doesn’t get enough discussion/coverage/attention/whatever word you want to attach to it. There’s only so much that you can do to try and stay on top of things, and even if you’re trying, things slip by.

Case in point.

On Tuesday morning, I was throwing a few searches around on Twitter, as I do from time to time to attempt to discover recruiting news for any Marquette team. That’s when I saw this tweet from one of the most reliable voices in women’s basketball recruiting.

Ah, yes, the commitment of Camryn Taylor, which we covered over the weekend. If you read the article about Taylor joining the Golden Eagles, then you may remember that I called that Marquette’s fourth commitment for 2019. I did the same here in this tweet as well.

As you can see, Raoul’s tweet calls Camryn Taylor Marquette’s fifth 2019 commitment. That meant it was time to head to the Twitter mines to see what we could see. Best place to start? His feed’s mentions of Marquette, obviously, and that brought up this one from August.

And there it is: Taylor Valladay is Marquette’s mystery commitment. As you can see, that tweet is from August, which meant it was time to figure out when that commitment actually happened.

JULY.

I’m not entirely sure how this one slipped past my attempts to search for recruiting news, other than summer is a crazy bananas recruiting time, and also I generally don’t search for “committing.” “Commit” and “committed” are favorites, but not “committing.” Might have to change that up in the future.

ANYWAY

Marquette first offered a scholarship to Taylor Valladay coming out of team camps hosted by the Golden Eagles in mid-June. That was a pretty quick turnaround from mid-June to mid-July for Valladay to make her decision, but hey: when you know, you know. She had a career year for Rich South High School on the far south side of Chicago, averaging 13.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists, and 3.1 steals. The points, rebounds, and steals are all career bests for Valladay, who has been at least a contributor to Rich South’s varsity squad since her freshman year, and the points and steals are team bests for the year as well. She missed out on the team lead in rebounds by 0.1 per game as well. The 5’10” Valladay also shot 42% from behind the three-point arc last season, but it was on just two attempts per game. Her made threes accounted for just 60 of her 320 points on the year, so she’s much more accomplished at scoring in other ways.

In other words, it seems that she’s the kind of player that can excel while playing for Marquette head coach Carolyn Kieger: Multi-dimensional and willing to do a little bit of everything on the court.

Here’s a three minute highlight reel for Valladay that was published in late May:

And a couple of scouting report tweets, although if you look closely, you’ll be able to see the inherent bias from these.

As discussed in depth earlier, Valladay is Marquette’s fifth verbal commitment for the class of 2019, joining Destiny Strother, Jordan King, Claire Kaifes, and Camryn Taylor. Here’s what the scholarship chart looks like now that we’ve accounted for Valladay.

Five freshmen on track to come in to replace six outgoing seniors, but thanks to the two currently open scholarships, Marquette still has some open roster space to address. It’s not that big of a deal that the spots aren’t filled for 2018-19 as Allazia Blockton and company will be taking up a majority of the minutes. That changes in 2019-20, however, and having more options to fill those suddenly available minutes is always a better way to go.

Marquette is waiting on decisions from three top 70 prospects in the class. Shemera Williams recently took an official visit to Milwaukee, and fellow Milwaukee prep star Sydnee Roby recently kept MU on her list while cutting from seven schools to five. Kaelynn Satterfield is a New York native (and daughter of former Cincinnati player Kenny Satterfield), and included Marquette in her cutdown list over the summer.

We’ll see where things go over the next five weeks until the fall signing period starts... or perhaps longer, as there’s nothing stopping any of these young women from waiting until the spring to sign.

A final note, dear reader: If anyone knows about recruiting news for any Marquette sport, particularly commitments and particularly for women’s basketball since it’s the easiest sport to keep an eye on the scholarship count, tell your friends here at Anonymous Eagle. You can tweet us, send us a message on Facebook, or even send an old fashioned email to anon.eagle@gmail.com. The inbox is always open.