We’ve got two new Marquette women’s basketball scholarship offers to talk about today. One is actually from almost two weeks ago and has been sitting in the ol’ editorial dashboard while the 2020-21 season preview machine kept firing, while the other one just popped up this past week. If you’re particularly worried that I was dragging my feet on this, well, let’s put it this way: Both young women involved here are Class of 2023 prospects and thus can’t even sign a national letter of intent for two years. Heck, Megan Duffy’s only been able to pick up the phone and call them at will since the middle of June, so it’s all fine.

Anyway, let’s get started.

Jordan Wood

Okay, well, let’s start here: ESPN has a profile page for the 6’2” forward out of Waukegan, Illinois. Considering that The World Wide Leader only ranks the top 25 players in the country for the Class of 2023 right now and they’re saying that Wood is a four-star prospect, this all seems to be very good. Here’s a scouting report from a US Junior National Team qualifier camp of some sort in April 2019 that ESPN lists:

Agile finesse-4 rebounds and attacks in transition game; offensive game keeps the defense honest to the arc; finishes plays in transition game; potential.

Seems good, especially since April 2019 would have been while she was still in eighth grade if I’m doing my math accurately here. Also good: Prep Girls Hoops ranking Wood as the #2 player in the 2023 class amongst Illinois prospects. Also good: This article from the Chicago Tribune back in March of this year says that Wood is 6’4”, and it lets us know that she averaged 14.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game last season for Carmel..... as a freshman. That’s definitely how you end up with scholarship offers from Iowa, Illinois, and Purdue while you’re still a freshman. Here’s a Trib article from back in December 2019 that says, and no I’m not kidding, that Wood projects to end up standing 6’7”. I’ll believe it when I see it of course, but man, considering that the article also goes out of its way to praise her dribbling skills and passing abilities means pretty much the sky is the limit for Wood in terms of basketball potential even if she never grows another inch.

Here’s another scouting report for Wood that she went out of her way to pass along on Friday afternoon:

While we’re talking about Wood’s Twitter, we can pass along that she also has scholarship offers from (in reverse chronological order) DePaul, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, and Michigan State if we only scroll back to July 1st. The list absolutely does not stop there, and it’s probably not anywhere close to slowing down.

If you’d like to see some highlights, please check out Wood’s Hudl page or her MaxPreps page. There’s lots of clips for you to pore over.

Lisa Thompson

Remember when we said a moment ago that Jordan Wood was the second best 2023 prospect in the state of Illinois according to Prep Girls Hoops? Yeah, so Thompson is #1. It looks like she doesn’t have an ESPN page yet, which is a little bit surprising because Wood does, but such is life.

Thompson attends Joliet West in — duh — Joliet, Illinois, where her team went 29-4 last season. This was, to a certain extent because the 5’8” freshman made an immediate impact. According to Max Preps, she was #2 on the team in scoring at 15.3 points per game, and she chipped in 3.9 rebounds and team highs in both assists (4.6/game) and steals (3.0/game). This all seems very good. She did shoot just 31% from behind the three-point arc on 139 attempts in 32 games, so that’s definitely an area to work on between now and the fall of 2023 when she’s slated to start college.

Thompson’s pinned tweet on her account is from August 1st of this year, and she had 24 offers listed in an image in that pinned tweet. It’s all high majors — most notably DePaul for our purposes here — offering her spots, which again, makes it surprising that ESPN’s not on the ball here. Since August 1st, she’s added offers from UCLA, Florida State, and Arizona State in addition to the one from Marquette, so yeah, things are not slowing down for Thompson.

I don’t have any video for you here, it seems. I’m not finding anything useable on YouTube, and while I can point you at a Hudl page, it was created in November 2019 and there has been no further updates.

And now, onwards to the scholarship chart.

2023 is a long way off. The current freshmen who have yet to play a game for Marquette will be the seniors in the fall of 2023, so making any broad gestures about what the Golden Eagles do and do not need in terms of building a roster is a little bit silly. However, what we do know is that Megan Duffy and her staff are projected to have six seniors headed out the door at the conclusion of the previous season. As such, the Class of 2023 is going to need to be a power packed one for Marquette. I’d say grabbing the top two players out of the state of Illinois would go a long way towards making sure that happens. Again, though, it’s a long way off and it’s clear that the recruiting process for both Wood and Thompson is far from over.