Zed Key Schedules Official Visit To Marquette

I tell you what, man: Adam Zagoria is out there hustling for that sweet Marquette men’s basketball recruiting information.

On Tuesday, everyone’s favorite independent college basketball newshound was out at Long Island Lutheran High School, as coaches came out to visit some of the players on the basketball team there. While some of the focus had to be on Andre Curbelo, the 247 Sports Composite #54 player in the country, our attention is on Zed Key. Thanks to Zagoria, we know that Key will be taking an official visit to Marquette starting on September 21st.

Key is a 6’8”, 215 pound small forward, according to his 247 Sports page. He’s currently ranked #157 in the country, and we should probably tip the cap to MU head coach Steve Wojciechowski and his staff here. When Marquette offered Key a scholarship back in late June of this year, Key was ranked #291 in the country. It’s not that surprising that he’s up into the top 160 at this point, given that Key was a top 120 prospect as recently as January 2019, but credit where credit is due to the coaching staff for noticing a guy who was getting overlooked and/or undervalued on a national level.

Key has already taken an official visit to Ohio State, and he’ll follow up his trip to Marquette with an official visit to Florida a week later. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t have an official cutdown recruiting list, but it seems that Key is down to Illinois, St. John’s, Providence, and Rutgers for his final two available official visits, with the Illini getting a particular lean and interest from him out of that group.

Here’s what Key told Zagoria about Marquette:

“They were just talking about the campus and how would I fit in as a player,” he said. “They were talking about my character and how it would fit in right with the team. They talked about the basketball resources of the program.“

Key speaks regularly with Marquette assistant Dwayne Killings. “Yes, we talk about the campus, we’re just building a relationship,” he said.

Marquette now has three official visits scheduled for the remainder of the month of September. AJ Hoggard, the #70 player in the country, is set to come to town on September 17th. Coleman Hawkins, the #208 player in the country, will visit Marquette starting on September 20th. RJ Davis, the #56 player in the country, will follow behind Hawkins starting on September 27th. It’s worth noting that Key mentioned to Zagoria that he’s friends with Davis, but they haven’t had any serious conversations about their basketball futures together.

You will notice, of course, that Key’s visit is set to start the day after Hawkins’ visit will start. That’s probably not ideal in terms of attention to one guy at a time, but sometimes you just have to make these things work with the schedules and times that the prospects have available. As long as both guys understand the situation, then I’m sure it will be fine.

In addition to Hoggard, Hawkins, and Davis, Marquette is waiting to hear about a decision from Dudley Blackwell and Osasere Ighodaro. Ighodaro (#72) included the Golden Eagles in a trimmed down list in July, while Blackwell (#147) spent one of his five senior year official visits on MU in that same month. There is a little bit of a buzz in the atmosphere that an announcement could be coming from Ighodaro sooner rather than later, but that hasn’t turned into anything official as far as timing goes.

Marquette does have a few other irons in the 2020 fire, most notably Dawson Garcia and Jalen Suggs, but they haven’t trimmed their list officially or set any visits. Garcia, ranked #29 in the country by 247 Sports, recently said on Twitter that he was going to be cutting things down soon, but as of right now, there’s nothing official on that.

Marquette is kind of running out of time and prospects for the Class of 2020. If we presume that Tommy Gardiner is only on scholarship for the 2019-20 season, then even with Justin Lewis committed, MU still projects to have five open scholarship spots for the 2020-21 season. That is a lot of space, but we’re also starting to approach the time of year when head coach Steve Wojciechowski tends to start bringing in commitments. I guess we’ll see what the next two months hold in store.

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