Top 60 Forward Isaac Traudt Gets An Offer From Marquette Men’s Basketball

We’re about a month away from the national fall signing period for the Class of 2021, but the Marquette men’s basketball coaching staff is working on prospects for down the road, too. On Monday night, Class of 2022 prospect Isaac Traudt announced that he has been offered a scholarship spot by head coach Steve Wojciechowski and his staff.

Traudt is currently listed as a 6’9”, 195 pound power forward out of Grand Island, Nebraska, by 247 Sports. For those of you (like me) not on top of your Nebraska geography, Grand Island is about two hours west of Omaha on the Nebraska/Iowa state line. If you divided the state into thirds, I think Grand Island would be right about on the line between eastern and central Nebraska, and I am sure that I have invited Nebraska Geography Nerds into the comments to yell at me about this now.

Traudt is currently a top 60 prospect according to 247 Sports, as they have him as the #55 prospect in the Class of 2022 in their Composite system. It’s outside rankings that are boosting him up, as 247’s internalized system has Traudt down at #90. Either way, a top 100 prospect is still a great basketball player, and there’s a lot less difference between 55 and 90 than there is between 55 and 20, which is 35 spots in the other direction.

The Composite system has Traudt as the #10 power forward in 2022, which I believe makes him Marquette’s top prospect at the position in this recruiting class. The first name that jumps out at me as I scroll through is #16 Camden Heide out of Minnesota, who is ranked #83 in the country. Traudt is also noted as the best player in the state of Nebraska, standing ahead of Jasen Green, who is also a power forward and is ranked #138 in the country.

To the surprise of no one, Creighton and Nebraska have both offered Traudt a scholarship already. The Jays and the Golden Eagles are joined by fellow Big East squad Georgetown, and yes, it’s just weird to type “central Nebraska is fertile recruiting ground for a team from Washington, D.C.” Since the start of September alone, Traudt has received offers from Georgetown, Oregon, Iowa, Ole Miss, and Louisville. 247 Sports lists 12 other Major Seven programs as having offered Traudt a scholarship already, so as you’d expect for a top 60 prospect, it’s going to be a long road to a final decision from him.

Max Preps lists 25 games played in the 2019-20 season for Traudt at Grand Island High School. He averaged 16.7 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 1.8 assists, which is pretty great. He went 44-for-122 from behind the three-point line, which is a 36% conversion rate. That’s absolutely fine for a dude who is 6’9” as long as he can also mix it up inside, too. 122 is less than half of Traudt’s field goal attempts on the year, so we’ll pretend that he can.

Here’s three minutes of highlights from mid-August of this year:

And another 2:30 worth of clips, also from mid-August of this year.

Aside: There are way too many people attending these events during a pandemic, much less discussing the insanity of playing these events during a pandemic.

Traudt also has a Hudl page, and the very first thing you see when you load it up right now is a “Sophomore Season” compilation that runs over 15 minutes. Seems useful.

Onwards to the scholarship chart.....

As was the case when we talked about Jai Smith’s scholarship offer, it’s hard to talk about what Marquette is doing with their 2022 recruiting until we get the 2021 recruiting finalized and nailed down. With three open scholarships for 2021 still available, the Golden Eagles are probably not done with that recruiting class. Until they are, we don’t know how many spots are actually available for 2022. All we know for sure is that Greg Elliott’s spot will be coming available after the Michigan native finishes his eligibility in 2021-22.

With that said, if Traudt is a top 60 inside/outside threat, then you do what you need to do to put him on your roster and then figure out how to succeed with him on it later on down the road. You can easily see how a guy with his skill set would fit into the role played by Brendan Bailey last season, or the role played by Sam Hauser the two years before that. There’s an argument to be made that Traudt is a better college prospect than both of those guys (#92 and #83 in their year’s 247 Composite respectively), so you’d like to think that Traudt would be a natural fit for Steve Wojciechowski’s offensive scheme.