Ethan Morton Will Announce His College Decision On May 9th

Yet another springtime Marquette men’s basketball recruiting update for you on this fine and lovely Thursday, but I’m going to warn you ahead of time: It won’t be a fun one.

On Tuesday evening, Ethan Morton tweeted out that he’ll be announcing his college decision on Thursday, May 9th, at 8:45pm. I presume, given that Morton attends high school in Butler, Pennsylvania, just a bit north of Pittsburgh, that means 8:45pm Eastern time.

This is fairly relevant, as Marquette had offered Morton a scholarship last summer, and as of April 22nd of this year, they were still interested enough in Morton (and vice versa) that the coaching staff went to visit him in Pennsylvania. Morton is currently ranked #42 in the country by the 247 Sports Composite system, making him a four-star prospect. He’s the #12 small forward in the Class of 2020, and the top player in the entire state of Pennsylvania.

He’s also probably not choosing Marquette.

As always, the 247 Sports Crystal Ball is little more than window dressing for their site. If four out of 10 recruitniks pick Duke for so-and-so, it doesn’t mean there’s a 40% chance he’ll go there, and so on. However, there is one time where it is useful, and it’s when a recruit announces when they’ll make their collegiate choice public, just like Morton has done. As of this writing, there have been six Crystal Ball picks for him. All were made since 2pm on Tuesday, roughly four hours before Morton posted his tweet. The first three were all 247 Sports employees. The last two were made after Morton released his announcement timing.

All six are for Purdue.

As always, these things are imperfect. But six picks in 25 hours, all centered around Morton’s tweet, all for the same team..... yeah, that seems pretty definitive.

Marquette is far from devoid of options for the Class of 2020 beyond Morton. There’s the Minnesota trio of Jalen Suggs, Dain Dainja, and Dawson Garcia, as well as top 100 small forwards Jabri Abdur-Rahim and Dudley Blackwell, both of whom have picked up scholarship offers from Marquette in recent weeks. Head coach Steve Wojciechowski’s brand new contract extension may help grease the wheels towards the Golden Eagles putting recruits next to Symir Torrence in 2020.

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