Class Of 2020 Center Zach Loveday Gets An Offer From Marquette

Never a dull moment around these parts as the Marquette men’s basketball recruiting wheels keep on turning. Shoutout to Corey Evans over at Rivals, as he let us know that the Golden Eagles have extended a scholarship offer to Class of 2020 center Zach Loveday.

247 Sports (sorry, Corey, but I love the Composite system) lists Loveday as a 7-foot tall, 200 pound center. Hailing from Gallipolis, Ohio, he attends Huntington Prep in Huntington, West Virginia. That puts Loveday’s hometown about an hour’s drive away from the prep school that he attends. He’s rated as a four-star prospect in the Class of 2020 and ranked #50 overall by the 247 Sports Composite system. He’s the #8 center in the class, one spot below fellow Marquette target Dain Dainja, and he’s the #2 prospect in the state of West Virginia. If you wanted to count Loveday as an Ohio recruit, his 0.9795 rating would make him the #2 prospect coming out of that state as well. According to 247’s list, Loveday already has offers from the likes of Louisville, Baylor, Indiana, Michigan, and Xavier, amongst a long, long list of teams.

If Huntington Prep sounds very familiar to you, the loyal reader of this here internet website, there’s a very good reason for that. In the past two weeks, Marquette has extended offers to two other Huntington Prep players: First AJ Hoggard, and then Dudley Blackwell. I can’t help but start to wonder 1) when Marquette is going to offer a scholarship to Jaemyn Brakefield, their teammate and the top WV prospect, and 2) what Brakefield thinks about all of his teammates getting scholarships from Marquette but not him.

Here’s a paragraph of a scouting report on Loveday from The Athletic’s Dustin Dopirak, who published the article in question just last week:

Loveday has evident strengths with a better-than-average handle for a man his size, superb passing skills for a center and a smooth left-handed shooting stroke that could make him a legitimate 3-point threat and a true stretch 5. However, he’s listed at just 200 pounds and has only the rudimentary beginnings of a post game, and he’ll need a lot of time in the weight room and a lot of training before he can be a force on the low block.

I highly recommend that article (via subscription, of course) for a full view picture on the kind of dude that Loveday is, because he seems pretty unique, both in terms of basketball and just being a guy in the world.

There’s not much of an online video presence for Loveday at this point, but there is this 66 second video clip of highlights from just a few weeks ago. While you’re watching, remember that he’s a 7-foot tall high school junior.

2020 figures to be an important recruiting class for the Golden Eagles. On top of the fact that they’ll be losing four seniors and will likely have one extra scholarship from 2019-20 carrying over, Steve Wojciechowski’s recent contract extension makes it very clear that he and his staff need to make something happen in 2020. Sure, the extension makes sure that Wojciechowski will still be the head coach when the 2020 prospects finish their collegiate careers, but the same can not be said for the 2021 prospects who will be coming into view a year from now.

Here’s what the scholarship picture looks like right now.