Symir Torrence Reclassifies To The Class Of 2019

How’s this for a Friday news dump?

At 8:02pm on a Friday night, Marquette men’s basketball announced that Symir Torrence would be joining the team this summer in preparation for the offseason European trip and then the 2019-20 school year and season. This is a change from Torrence’s original commitment to Marquette back in January, when he was a Class of 2020 prospect.

While we’re officially going to call this a change in plans, it’s a very small change. Marquette’s offer to Torrence was for either the 2019 or 2020 season, as he was only a 2020 prospect because of his transfer to Vermont Academy. He’s academically eligible in the NCAA’s eyes to be declared done with high school, and so he’s headed to Marquette to start his collegiate career. I presume the wait was for Torrence’s final grades at Vermont Academy to be posted to make sure everything was squared away on that end.

As of right now, 247 Sports lists Torrence as a 6’3”, 170 combo guard. They rate him as a four-star prospect in the Class of 2020, where he’s the #44 prospect in the country. He’s the #3 combo guard behind only Marquette targets Jalen Suggs and Nimari Burnett, and he’s listed as the best (and only notable) prospect in the state of Vermont. If he were still at his old high school in his home town of Syracuse, New York, he’d be the #2 prospect in that state.

However, that’s all Class of 2020 data. If you take Torrence’s rating of 0.9813 and port it into 2019 — and yes, I know this isn’t exactly how it works, but you get the idea here — it would make him the #47 prospect for this coming fall’s class. In a manner of speaking, Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski just pulled a May commitment of a 2019 top 50 player out of thin air.

If you add the most similar player to Torrence to Marquette’s 2019 recruiting class of Dexter Akanno, that gives MU a 247 Class Calculator rating of 41.57. That would be the #50 class in the country, and fourth best in the Big East. Marquette’s doing that on two players, whereas the current #50 team in the country — Georgetown, by coincidence — needs four players to get that good of a score.

If you’re of the particularly suspicious type, then Torrence reclassifying isn’t a surprise to you. Back in late April, the men’s basketball put out a video of the team surprising the coaching staff during a meeting. It was very much a “hey, look at how much we love each other and also our coaches” propaganda video in the wake of the Hauser brothers transferring. However, it also showed us a look at Wojciechowski’s whiteboard writings during said meeting:

That’s “Symir RS” with the RS written in red under Freshmen on the board. That made it look an awful lot like the coaching staff was expecting Torrence to make the change to 2019 a little over a month ago. It also makes it look like they’re expecting/planning on Torrence to redshirt for the 2019-20 season.

If you’re wondering if we’re reading waaaaaaay too much into the video, well, that’s definitely possible. It also had “Jayce OV” written on it, and shortly thereafter Jayce Johnson was announced as taking an official visit (OV, get it?) before committing to Marquette for his grad transfer season. None of this is written in stone, of course. It’s literally written in wipe away marker, in fact. But before you get too excited about adding a top 50 recruit for this fall, keep in mind that it’s possible that Wojciechowski isn’t expecting him to play.

With Torrence officially in the fold for 2019-20, that means it’s time to update the scholarship chart.

Marquette currently has one available scholarship for this fall, but I think it’s safe to say that it will go unused at this point. Whether that goes to a mid-year transfer or a transfer next spring or a Class of 2020 prospect remains to be seen. Torrence changing classes doesn’t change anything as far as 2020’s available scholarships or MU’s recruiting targets, as Torrence was always using one that year no matter what. MU will have at least four scholarships to fill in the fall of 2020 with four seniors on the roster in 2019-20.