Stanford Transfer Cormac Ryan Is Considering Marquette

While it certainly seemed that Marquette men’s basketball had their roster set after promoting the jersey numbers for their three newcomers earlier this week, it turns out that might not be the case. CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein is reporting that Stanford transfer Cormac Ryan has the Golden Eagles amongst the list of schools that he is now considering.

Marquette is standing in line along with Butler, Davidson, Gonzaga, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Penn, Texas, Villanova, Virginia, and Yale. My goodness that was a long list.

We should probably start with the fact that there is a long list of teams on Ryan’s list, and thus, the odds are kind of low that he ends up at Marquette as a result. Just take that into consideration as we do our standard issue breakdown for this kind of news.

Ryan just finished up his freshman year at Stanford. He was the #68 prospect in the country in the Class of 2018 according to 247 Sports’ Composite system, and I suppose that he mostly lived up to the hype in Palo Alto. He appeared in 24 games for Stanford, including 17 starts. He was in the Cardinal starting lineup on opening night, but injuries eventually took him in and out of the first five as the season wore on.

The 6’5”, 190 pound guard averaged 8.7 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.9 assists, and 1.0 steals in his freshman year while compiling a shooting split of 33.3% overall, 31.6% from behind the three-point line, and 73.7% from the free throw line. Those aren’t particularly great numbers in terms of shooting, but 9&4 is pretty solid production from a freshman.

Everything I’m reading about Ryan either coming out of high school, while at Stanford, or after he entered the transfer portal indicates that his primary value is as a shooter. That didn’t really come through as a freshman, and it wasn’t just his injuries sapping him of efficiency towards the end of the year. Before Ryan missed a game in 2018-19, he shots 21-for-62 from behind the arc, including oh-fer appearances against both Middle Tennessee and Wisconsin. He’s clearly not shy about shooting it even when his shots aren’t hitting, leading the team in attempts and attempts per game. Stanford had better options in terms of shooting percentage, but the fact of the matter is that Jerod Haase generally doesn’t coach his teams to let it fly that often. Steve Wojciechowski clearly does coach in that direction, so it remains to be seen if Marquette would be able to provoke either better decision making or merely more accurate shooting from Ryan if he were to end up in Milwaukee.

I have to imagine that part of Marquette’s interest in Ryan stems from his club team participation back when he was in high school. Ryan played for New York Renaissance, a club that Marquette has been very involved with lately. MU has two recent scholarship offers out to guys from that club, one in 2020 and one in 2021, as well as a bit more longer term offer to Jonathan Kuminga. I suspect that this is the impact of assistant coach Dwayne Killings on the recruiting process, as his employment history before coming to Marquette is centralized in the northeast.

Ryan would be sitting out the 2019-20 season before having three years of eligibility remaining starting in 2020-21. That would put him in the same class year at Marquette as Torrence and Dexter Akanno, as well as take one scholarship off the board for the fall of 2020. That recruiting class is poised to make a major impact for Marquette, as the Golden Eagles will be looking to fill some fairly big shoes after the departures of Markus Howard, Sacar Anim, and Ed Morrow. There is a question to be asked about what impact Ryan might have on MU’s 2020 recruiting, but that’s something better left until after he actually ends up choosing Marquette.

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