Marquette Men’s Basketball Has A Few New Scholarship Offers Out There

The summer recruiting period continues to roll right along, and as could be expected, the Marquette coaching staff saw some guys that raised their antennae enough to offer a scholarship. Three of them are Class of 2020 guys, so we’ll start with the Class of 2019 guy first, since that’s the most relevant offer right now.

Dahmir Bishop

At first, when I saw that Wojo had made an offer to a 2019 player at this stage of the ballgame, I was presuming that it was going to be a bit of a diamond in the rough kind of situation. Something kind of like Greg Elliott’s recruitment last year, where he was a late offer, and didn’t have a great recruiting ranking, but you could still see how he would fit in on the team.

That’s not the case for the 6’4”, 175 pound Bishop, unless he suddenly made a recent surge in the recruiting rankings. 247 Sports says that he’s the #84 player in the Class of 2019 according to their Composite system. He’s the eighth best combo guard in the country, and the third best player in the state of Pennsylvania, one spot below Villanova commit Eric Dixon.

Bishop attends Imhotep Institute in Philadelphia, where he led the boys’ basketball team to a second straight PIAA Class 4A championship. He had a game-high 20 points on 6-of-9 shooting, including 3-of-5 from behind the arc as Imhotep beat Sharon, 71-35.

Offering a scholarship to Dahmir Bishop at this point in the 2019 trajectory does raise questions about where Marquette stands with guys like Samuell Williamson and James Bishop. These are guys who have seemed to be recruiting priorities since the season ended and also seem to play roughly the same position as the newly offered Bishop.

This is the best I can do for you in terms of highlight videos for Bishop:

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Onwards to 2020 prospects!

Zeb Jackson

Marquette makes it four offers for Jackson in the month of July, alongside bids from Arizona State, Wisconsin, and Iowa. That doesn’t include his offers from Virginia and Vanderbilt at the very end of June, either. The 6’2” shooting guard from Maumee, Ohio, is 247 Sports’ #100 ranked player in the Class of 2020, and the #2 player in his state.

Jackson attends Maumee Valley Country Day School in Maumee, Ohio. The Hawks advanced to the Division 4 Regional semifinals in the state tournament before bowing out. I can’t find stats for the season for him, but Jackson had a team high 16 points in MVCDS’ final tournament game. It was the first regional appearance for Maumee Valley Country Day since 2012, and it sounds like a lot of credit for that goes to Jackson.

This video says “sophomore year highlights,” but it’s only two minutes long.

This one is a little bit older, dated in January of 2017, but it’s just over three minutes long.

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Nimari Burnett

Since we first heard about Marquette’s interest in Burnett, his recruiting ranking has stayed steady. Just like he was in mid-June, the 6’3” shooting guard is the #51 ranked player in the class of 2020 according to 247 Sports. He’s also still the #7 player in the state of California, which is slightly interesting because fellow California guy and Marquette prospect Jaylen Clark has dropped from #5 to #8.

Burnett’s high school situation is interesting. He plays for Prolific Prep, but that’s not actually a high school. It’s just a basketball academy. Prolific Prep has a partnership with Napa Christian Academy in Napa, CA. If this situation works out nicely for everyone involved, then hooray, but I have to say situations like this kind of make me more than a little uneasy.

Here’s two-and-a-half minutes of highlights.

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Bryce Thompson

Any time you start to get yourself involved with the best player in the state of Oklahoma, you’re bound to find yourself involved in one hell of a recruiting battle from the get go. That’s the case with the 6’2”, 170 pound Thompson, who is the #44 player in the country according to 247 Sports’ Composite system and yes, the best Class of 2020 player in Oklahoma.

As you can guess, his offer list right now reads like you’re just listing teams in the Big 12 or teams that used to be in the Big 12: Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Colorado, and Texas A&M. Depending on how serious Kansas is here, Marquette is already late to the party, so we’ll have to wait and see how this goes.

I would highly recommend this March 2017 article from OK Hoops Report, which has a discussion of Thompson’s father’s experiences in college hoops.... playing for Bill Self at Tulsa..... as well as the fact that he’s running the Playing With Purpose club program that you see included in the tweet announcements above. There’s a lot of scouting information on the younger Thompson in there, too.

Booker T. Washington High School has reached the Oklahoma state championship game in each of the past two seasons, but in two different classes and with two different head coaches. They fell in the 6A title game in 2017, and then lost in the 5A championship in 2018. It should be interesting to see what that means for Thompson and his teammates in the next two campaigns.

Here’s a couple of highlight videos, but be forewarned: They’re both from summer 2017.

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Okay, now that you know Marquette’s newest targets, we’ll wrap up with the scholarship chart. Remember: Bishop is a 2019 recruit, while the other three are 2020 prospects. 2020 will be a much more important recruiting class for the Golden Eagles, at least as things are currently projected.