Let’s jump in the Wayback Machine a little bit and talk about a couple of scholarship offers that the Marquette men’s basketball staff handed out last week. We’ll go in chronological order as one is for the Class of 2020 and the other is in the Class of 2021.

Zed Key

Zed Key is listed by 247 Sports as a 6’8”, 215 pound power forward out of Glen Head, New York. He attends Long Island Lutheran High School there. 247 has him as the #291 ranked player in the class of 2020, which makes him a three-star prospect. It’s also a big drop from when he was a top 150 (and top 125) guy a year ago. He’s the eighth best prospect in the entire state of New York, and for whatever reason, 247 shows him as the #47 small forward, not power forward. I have no explanation for this, other than that he was possibly one or the other type of forward a year ago, and perhaps he went through a growth spurt without putting on weight. That might also explain his drop in the rankings. I have no idea. 247 only gives us rank history, not height and weight history.

All of this might be a moot point fairly shortly. Key was a participant in the recent NBPA Top 100 camp. You probably shouldn’t be barely ranked in the top 300 if you’re getting invites to camps like that. On top of that, the offers came flooding in for Key following the camp, so he’s going to get more than his fair share of evaluation when the July live period opens up. It’s worth nothing that Marquette was in contact with Key back in April, before the explosion of attention. Does that give the Golden Eagles any kind of advantage here? We’ll have to wait and find out.

According to this article from Newsday, Key was averaging 11.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, and just under a block per game in late March. It was his first year at Long Island Lutheran after transferring after his sophomore year, and while Key was coming off the bench for the Crusaders, it was just a matter of the coach liking the spark that Key brought off the bench as opposed to anything else. That’s not for nothing, either. LiLu went 25-2 this past season, including 12 straight to close the season and win a state title.

Here’s two minutes of footage of Key from the Top 100 camp that appears to be from Key’s very own YouTube account.

Quincy Allen

If you prefer seeing a more familiar name on things, here’s Corey Evans.

Quincy Allen is listed as a 6’6”, 180 pound small forward by 247 Sports. The Washington, D.C. native attends Maret School, and yes, he’s a five star prospect. 247 has him ranked at #23 in the country right now, which makes him the #9 small forward and the best player in D.C. It’s kind of wild that Marquette currently has offers out to the #1, #2, and #9 small forwards in the country. We’ll see what happens long term with these guys, as the NBA Draft age may change between now and then.

MaxPreps doesn’t give us full stats for Allen, but in the 23 games that they have stats for him in 2018-19, he averaged 11.0 points per game. The site doesn’t have an equal number of games for every player, but for what they do have, 11.0 per game was second best on the team. Maret went 20-8 this past season, ending the year with a loss in the D.C. association semifinals.

Here’s 90 seconds of highlights that Rivals put together on Allen back in January. I believe this is all from a game where he had a double-double against Chicago’s Whitney Young at an event at the Basketball Hall Of Fame.

With these scholarships coming in different years, we can’t really draw a generalized summary of MU’s recruiting picture in terms of both guys. What we know is that MU is expecting to have four scholarships opening up for the fall of 2020 and another three opening up for the fall of 2021. It’s obviously a long long time before we get to either spot, but that’s what the MU coaching staff is working with right now. There is a 2019-20 scholarship sitting open right now, which may give MU five open spots for fall 2020. We’ll see what happens with that for sure, but it’s almost assuredly not going to anyone before a mid-year transfer at best.

Here’s the full scholarship picture as it stands right now.