Jonas Aidoo Announces His Commitment To Marquette

Marquette men’s basketball has added on to their 2021 recruiting class. On Thursday evening, Jonas Aidoo announced his verbal commitment to play for Steve Wojciechowski and the Golden Eagles starting next school year. Aidoo picked MU out of an announced top 10 that also included Georgia, Houston, Kansas, Miami, North Carolina State, Providence, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wake Forest.

Aidoo is listed as a 6’11, 215 pound center by 247 Sports. Their Composite system currently has him ranked at #108 in the Class of 2021, which makes him the #19 center and the #4 prospect in the state of North Carolina. I have to say “currently” there because ESPN just updated their 2021 rankings yesterday. #108 is where Aidoo was before that, so he might be moving up. I feel confident in predicting a jump upwards because ESPN has Aidoo as the #70 prospect in the country, which is more in line with 247’s internal ranking of #83. You can see the potential for upward mobility here. Rivals is now bringing up the rear in these rankings, slotting Aidoo in at #104 in this recruiting class.

Before Aidoo’s commitment, Marquette ranked #57 in the country in terms of national recruiting classes with the commitments and signings of Kameron Jones and Stevie Mitchell. Obviously, 247 hasn’t updated things fast enough for me to tell you where they definitively are now, but they do have the Class Calculator to allow us to figure it out. Adding Aidoo to Jones and Mitchell bumps MU up to a Team Score of 51.54, which would be good enough to jump in front of Purdue at #32 nationally and move up from 9th in the Big East to 7th. I’m gonna go ahead and say that there are a lot of talented guys coming into the league next year if #32 in the country is only the seventh best recruiting class in the conference. Nearly one-fifth of the top 31 is made up of Big East teams? That’s nuts.

We should point out that the Class Calculator is using Aidoo as #108 to figure that out. With ESPN giving him a bump, he’s not going to stay outside the top 100 for long, I would imagine. Just for giggles, because this is not going to happen, but let’s try plugging in the #83 player from the Composite rankings. That’s Arizona commit Shane Dezonie, and he would give MU a Team Score of 53.69. That would move MU into the top 30 at #29, just a nudge ahead of Ole Miss and a similar nudge behind Duke. It wouldn’t change anything in the Big East, as Seton Hall is sixth at 54.49.

Let’s drop in the freshly updated scholarship chart a little earlier than normal here so we have a visual aid for what we’re talking about next.

From a pure “size of the human being” perspective, Aidoo is what Marquette needed to add in this recruiting class. With the projected departure of Theo John due to the end of his eligibility, Marquette needed to add a big man in this group. At 6’11”, Aidoo fits the bill. The question, though, is how much of John’s job as rim protector that Aidoo will be able to occupy immediately. With Dawson Garcia and Justin Lewis projected to still be around next year, that’s not a potential fatal flaw in the roster construction. However, at 215 pounds, 30 lighter than John’s current listed weight, it’s reasonable to ask if Aidoo can step in immediately and patrol the paint with the same authority. With that said, we’re talking about a year from now, which will hopefully include a summer of on campus strength and conditioning for Aidoo, so we’ll see what happens.

Here’s a scouting report from Jerry Meyer, 247 Sports’ Director of Basketball Scouting, that makes the same point:

Long, mobile and has positive athleticism. Must get stronger and tougher. Functional athleticism will improve with strength gain. Has good shooting touch to behind the arc. Can finish with his off hand (left). Decent rebounder but needs more strength on the boards. Has good court awareness. Does not have much back to the basket game at this point. Good to great shot blocker. Has a lot of potential. Again, strength gain is vital.

The reason why I couched the previous paragraph as “size of the human being” is because, well, quite honestly, as Meyer alluded to in his scouting report there, Aidoo is much more of a modern 21st century center/5-man than Theo John is, even with John’s newfound outside shooting stroke. Here’s a 4+ minute video clip that was just put up on YouTube in early November. You’ll get the picture pretty quickly that Aidoo is much more in the neighborhood of “talented lanky guy” that Steve Wojciechowski has been prioritizing in recruiting as of late.