Gabe Madsen Commits To Cincinnati

The Marquette men’s basketball coaching staff suddenly finds themselves with some free time coming up next weekend. Class of 2020 prospect Gabe Madsen had scheduled an official visit to Marquette on starting on September 6th. He won’t be taking that visit, though. He also isn’t rescheduling, because Madsen committed to Cincinnati on Saturday.

Madsen is a 6’6”, 180 pound small forward out of Rochester, Minnesota. He’s currently ranked #168 in the country by the 247 Sports Composite system, which makes him the #35 small forward and the #6 player in his state. Marquette had been recruiting him since at least 2017 when the Golden Eagles offered him a scholarship.

Now, before you get yourself completely bent out of shape about “OHMEHGERD, WHY CAN’T WOJO LAND THREE STAR RECRUITS,” there is a bit of context to take into account here. The context comes in the shape of Madsen’s twin brother, Mason, who also committed to Cincinnati on Saturday.

Mason, a 6’3”, 175 pound combo guard, is not listed in the 247 Sports Composite system. He is currently ranked #343 in the country in their internal system, and rated as a two star prospect. 247 Sports does not show Mason as receiving an offer from Marquette. I think it’s safe to say that Marquette did their due diligence on both Madsens, because you can’t really scout one without seeing the other. While the MU staff may have looked into what Mason brought to the table, I can’t say I remember seeing his name connected to Marquette recently. On top of that, Mason was not set to take an official visit to Marquette while Gabe was.

If playing with Mason was a priority for Gabe, then that meant Marquette was never really an option for him.

Let me ask you this, Marquette fans: Did you really want to see Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski recruit both sides of a third set of brothers? How did the first two sets go for him?

At the end of the day, this is a positive result for Marquette. The Golden Eagles never actually hosted Madsen on campus, so they didn’t cut into the limited number of official visits that they get to use. On top of that, it seems Madsen was never very serious about attending Marquette given his interest in playing with his brother, so spending a visit on him would have been essentially a complete waste of a visit. Instead, MU can use the visit on another prospect, whether that’s this year or next year, as the NCAA does keep a two year rolling limit on visits.

Speaking of prospects and visits, Marquette still has two 2020 recruits scheduled for the month of September. AJ Hoggard, the #67 player in the country, is set to come to town on September 17th. RJ Davis, the #69 player in the country, will follow behind him starting on September 27th.

In addition to Hoggard and Davis, Marquette is waiting to hear about a decision from Myles Stute, Dudley Blackwell, and Osasere Ighodaro. Stute (#174) and Ighodaro (#92) both included the Golden Eagles in a trimmed down list in July, while Blackwell (#101) spent one of his five senior year official visits on MU in that same month. 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.

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 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.