June 15th, as always, is the first day that college basketball coaches can contact recruits that just finished up their sophomore year of high school. As such, there are a TON of things to get through in terms of what Marquette men’s basketball got up to on the first day of contact with the Class of 2022. In this article, we’re only going to focus on the guys who picked up new scholarship offers since midnight on Monday morning from head coach Steve Wojciechowski as well as a couple of guys who already had scholarship offers and also got a phone call from the MU staff on Monday. There will be an entirely different article just to run through the — and this is not a joke — twenty-five recruits that only heard from Marquette on Monday.

See why I broke this up into two pieces?

Okay, let’s jump right in and get going.

NEW OFFERS

Alex Karaban

Okay, technically this one wasn’t after the contact period started, but it was right before it and we haven’t talked about this offer yet. So we’re going to start here!

247 Sports lists Karaban as a 6’7”, 190 pound small forward, although this article says he was up to 215 during this past season. He attends New Hampton School in New Hampton, New Hampshire, but he’s actually from Northborough, Massachusetts. He started high school out at Algonquin High in Northborough but took on the challenge of prep school because “I thought public school was getting easy.” Karaban does not currently have a rating or a ranking on his 247 Sports page, and he currently holds scholarship offers from Georgetown and Providence amongst others.

As a freshman for Algonquin, Karaban averaged 22.4 points, eight rebounds, and three assists per game. That was actually his second year of varsity basketball, as he played varsity for St. Peter-Marian High as an eighth grader. If that sounds a little ridiculous, I would like to point out that he averaged 16.6 points per game and also he is 6’7” as a sophomore in high school. Through January 20th of this past season, Karaban was averaging 19.4 points, 9.8 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.2 blocks and shooting 32.8% from long range. These all seem very good. Okay, yes, the shooting could be better, but the kid’s got time to develop.

Here’s a minute of highlights that was posted in mid-March.

Justin Taylor

247 Sports says that Taylor is a 6’6”, 200 pound small forward hailing from Charlottesville, Virginia. Yes, that does mean that he’s literally from Tony Bennett’s back yard. He’s currently ranked #48 in the Class of 2022 in the 247 Composite system, which, y’know, is pretty good. That makes him the #12 small forward in his class and the #2 SF that the Golden Eagles issued an offer to on Monday. Thanks to Oak Hill Academy being a thing, Taylor is the #4 prospect in the state of Virginia at the moment.

Up to this point, Taylor hasn’t broken through as a high major prospect. This seems kind of bonkers, since 247 has had him ranked in the top 60 since mid-December, but that’s what the scholarship list says. North Carolina State is his only high major offer right now, and his other offers are all relatively local to Virginia. I didn’t double check, but I’m going to go ahead and presume that has changed since Monday because top 50 prospects don’t stay hidden forever.

It appears that he averaged 15.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game this past season as his high school squad reached the state quarterfinals. Taylor was set to be one of 75 participants at the USA Basketball Junior National Team minicamp over Final Four weekend, but since that was cancelled due to the pandemic, he didn’t actually get to attend. Still, just getting on the national team radar is a pretty big deal, as those 75 invitees were spread across three recruiting classes.

Here’s a four minute highlight reel, although it’s over a year old at this point:

If you’d like some more current highlights, Taylor has a Hudl page that was last updated in March 2020 and includes a three minute junior year reel.

Kyle Filipowski

It’s time for a little detective work, or at the very least playing some guessing games. 247 Sports has Filipowski as a 6’8”, 175 pound center. Yes, that sounds slightly ridiculous, but remember: we’re talking about someone who just finished their sophomore year of high school. Now, to elaborate on that 6’8” thing. Verbal Commits says he’s 6’10” and 215 pounds, and also calls him a power forward. New England Recruiting Report says he’s 6’9” and lists him as a power forward. Something called The Hoop Hustle has a page for him and lists him at 6’11” and says he’s a big/wing. Let’s just say that I have many questions now, although they can probably be answered by his Twitter bio calling himself a “6’10 215Ibs do it all player .”

ANYWAY, Filipowski doesn’t have a rating or a ranking from 247 Sports, but he does have high major attention already. Marquette is the fourth Big East squad with him on the radar, as the Golden Eagles join Providence, UConn, and Xavier in pursuit. He also has offers from UCLA and Maryland.

I’m not completely sure how this past school year went for Filipowski at Wilbraham & Monson Academy, which is over towards Springfield in Massachusetts. However, I can tell you that they won the New England Prep School Class AA championship, and Filipowski was a big reason why. He had 18 of their 29 points in the first half and 26 of the first 47 points of the game in their 86-81 win over Worcester Academy. It looks like he went for 32 points on 8-for-12 shooting and a cool 15-for-15 from the free throw line. Filipowski also chipped in seven rebounds and two steals before fouling out. I can’t embed it, but you can find highlights from the championship game on that last link.

Javaughn Hannah

In what is definitely turning into a trend, Hannah does not have a rating or a ranking from 247 Sports at this juncture. He’s listed as a 6’4”, 200 pound shooting guard out of Mount Clemens, Michigan, where he attends — wait for it — Mount Clemens High School.

The rating/ranking thing is likely a mere formality at this point. Hannah already has offers from multiple high majors, including Arizona State, DePaul, and Texas A&M. 247 shows both Michigan and Michigan State as interested parties, but they’d have to be criminally asleep at the wheel to not be interested in a guy getting high major offers from out of state.

Michigan Insider, the 247 Sports avenue for all things Wolverines, talked to Hannah recently, and this is literally the first quote that they attribute to him:

“I’m the most under-rated player in the country.”

So that’s pretty good. Here’s his own scouting report on himself:

“In my opinion I’m like a baby Kawhi,” Hannah said confidently. “I can do anything on the floor. I’m a guard, I can push the ball, I can rebound, I can score, I play defense… I can do anything that you want me to do. And most importantly, I’m a winner.”

It’s worth noting that part of Hannah’s sense of self comes from the fact that he averaged 30 points a game this season. Seems good. Hannah told Michigan Insider that he’s one of just two players in the country to be doing that this year, and fellow Michigan prospect Emoni Bates is the other one. You can see how he could look at how he’s doing the same kind of scoring as the top prospect in the country in the Class of 2022 and think that he’s the most underrated guy out there. I do have to wonder how much of his scoring average has to do with a 60 point game that he had in an 88-58 win over Pontiac Arts & Technology Academy. Hannah averaged 20 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists as a freshman, before getting 31.5, 6.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and two steals through February 20th this season.

Can I interest you in highlights of said 60 point game?

Here’s three minutes of highlights from last summer’s grassroots action.

Noah Batchelor

Hailing from Adamstown, Maryland, Batchelor is currently ranked #52 in the Class of 2022 by the 247 Sports Composite system. That makes the 6’6”, 185 pound Batchelor the #14 small forward in the class, two spots below Justin Taylor who we mentioned a moment ago. He’s also the top prospect in the state of Maryland, just barely edging out Rodney Rice, who just picked up an offer from the Golden Eagles recently. I do mean “barely” in its most literal form, as Batchelor is #42, Favour Aire is #53, and Rice is #54. At that point, it really comes down to personal preference as to what kind of player do you like the most. Poor Tyrell Ward at #67, as he used to be the best player on his own team, but Rice recently transferred in to DeMatha from Bullis.

Where were we? Oh, right, Noah Batchelor. His offer list is pretty east coast heavy, with Clemson, Florida, NC State, and Virginia Tech joining his in-state Maryland in making it official. He also has interests from Auburn, Michigan, Villanova, and Virginia, and as a roughly top 50 prospect, these lists are only going to keep growing. He got a chance to attend a USA Basketball camp in Colorado last year, so it’s almost surprising that his list of schools is so small right now.

Batchelor attends Glenelg Country School in Ellicott City, which is about a 40 minute hike eastward from Adamstown over near the Virginia/West Virginia state lines. It appears that Glenelg did not have a very good season this past year, as Max Preps has them going 13-14. According to the Baltimore Sun, they were down to just seven players in late December due to injuries, so that may have had a lot to do with that. This was Batchelor’s first season with Glenelg after transferring from St. Maria Goretti, and as of late January, he was averaging 13.3 points per game to lead the team in scoring.

I don’t have much in the way of highlights for him, but I believe you’re watching #11 in black in this nine minute reel of Glenelg beating Bishop O’Connell in late November 2019.

Kamari Lands

It’s always fun to pull up the 247 Sports page for a new MU offer and see 1) A USA Basketball shirt in the profile picture and 2) A top 40 ranking. That’s the case for Kamari Lands, who is currently #37 in the country in his recruiting class. At 6’5” and 195 pounds, he’s the #10 small forward in the class, which makes him the best prospect at the position that Marquette is involved with to this point. Lands is the #2 prospect in the state of Indiana where he attends La Lumiere School. He is a native of Indianapolis, so it’s fair to have him listed as an Indiana prospect.

For a top 40 guy (and top 30 per 247’s internal numbers) with USA Basketball experience, Lands has an amazingly short list of offers officially listed by 247. DePaul and Xavier are the only high majors so far and DePaul’s offer may be because Jalen Coleman-Lands is family, while Miami (OH) is the only other squad listed. Indiana and Louisville are listed as Interested, so I have no idea why they’re dragging their feet.

In May 2019, Lands talked to the Indianapolis Star after going for 30 points in an EYBL game and said “I want to play point guard when I grow up,” which is pretty impressive for a guy who’s already 6’5”. I can’t track down any high school stats for him, but given that he’s a 2022 guy and La Lumiere’s roster is always stocked with high major guys, odds are that they wouldn’t be that impressive. In a recent profile on 247 Sports, Travis Branham had this scouting report for him:

The Indiana native has always been able to handle the ball and make plays for others at his age level on the AAU circuit given his blend of physical tools and feel for the game.

However, what has stood out over the course of the high school season is his development as a scorer off the bounce and in transition, as well as his ability to make shots off the catch.

Moving forward, it will be important for Lands to continue to develop his shooting and ball-handling but most importantly will be adding weight to his frame and building strength.

The only embeddable videos I see for him appear to be several years old, so we’ll pass on that. He does have a Hudl page which was last updated in late February.

Kendall Blue

I’m just going to tell you right now that tracking down information on Kendall Blue is going to be a huge pain in the butt. All I’ve done is type “kendall blue 247” into the ol’ Google search to get started and the first result is the 247 Sports page for Marquette target Kendall Brown. Do better, Google algorithm.

It’s not helping that Kendall Blue is from Minnesota, just like Brown. It’s definitely not helping that according to this website entry on him, Blue attends East Ridge High School in Woodbury, Minnesota, the same high school that Brown was at before transferring to Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas. It’s also not helping that when I run his first name through 247’s Search tool that it appears that Blue doesn’t even have a page on the site at all right now. Blue does have a Max Preps page, so we know that he’s 6’5”, so that’s something.

Thankfully because he’s in the Twin Cities area, we can rely on the Star Tribune’s Basketball Hub to give us useful information. They show 29 games worth of stats for Blue this past season, and he averaged 14.1 points and 4.9 rebounds per game. East Ridge went 21-5 on the year with a 17-1 record in conference play, perhaps in large part because Class of 2020 Wisconsin signee Ben Carlson was tearing it up for them as well.

Here’s nearly three minutes worth of highlights that went up on YouTube in late April.

Camden Heide

Yes, that’s Marquette Class of 2020 prospect Dawson Garcia in Heide’s tweet. We’ll be staying in Minnesota for this one, as Heide is currently the top 2022 prospect in the state according to 247 Sports. The four star prospect from Minneapolis is currently ranked #39 in the country in 247’s Composite system and along with Prince Aligbe and Trejuan Holloman, MU now has offered each of the top three prospects in the state for this recruiting class. I’m really starting to think that Steve Wojciechowski has it out for Richard Pitino.

I do have a slight question about what 247 is doing with Heide’s position ranking. He’s listed as a small forward in his Prospect Info, which makes sense at 6’5” and 180 pounds. However, when I look at his rankings, he’s the #7 power forward. Unless he suddenly bounced up four inches and 20 pounds, he’s definitely not a power forward. Of course, when you click on the #7 ranking, you get sent to the small forward list, but Heide isn’t on it. At #39 in the country, he would be #12, tucked in right in front of Justin Taylor and two spots behind Kamari Lands. He is over there in the Power Forwards right at #7 as expected. Get your act together, 247.

Hiede still has a relatively short list of schools getting involved with him. Arizona is the biggest name on the board, and every Big Ten school within driving distance — Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and even Purdue which isn’t really that close — has offered him a scholarship already. Iowa State is slacking off as they’re only interested as of whenever 247 last updated this list.

Wayzata High School is where Hiede goes to school, and they did not have a very good season this past year. 10-16 is a rough go of things, although they did go 7-5 in conference action. Hiede led the squad in scoring at 15.1 points per game, although the Star Tribune Hub only lists 23 games played for him.

I’ve got a couple of videos for you. One from October 2019:

One from November 2019:

And an OT game winner off a BLOB from March 2020.

Willie Lightfoot

Herein lies a fun tale of recruiting. As you can see from the tweet there, Lightfoot is from the Niagara Falls area in upstate New York. He led NF High School to the state semifinals as a freshman, but he transferred to Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas for his sophomore year. As mentioned a little bit ago, SCA is where MU target Kendall Brown attends high school now, so it seems likely that watching Brown there has led to Marquette’s interest in Lightfoot.

It doesn’t hurt that the 6’0”, 160 pound point guard is ranked #84 in the country by the 247 Sports Composite system. For whatever it’s worth to you, Lightfoot is getting there without a spot in the 247 internal rankings. He’s currently the #19 point guard in the Class of 2022, which puts him one spot in the rankings behind MU target Trejuan Holloman and six behind Judah Mintz, who recently picked up an offer from the Golden Eagles. Lightfoot is listed as the fifth best prospect in the state of Kansas, but two of the guys in front of him are his teammates at Sunrise Christian. If we swap him back to New York, his actual home state, then he would be the #2 prospect in the state, with fellow MU prospect Roddy Gayle sitting in front of him.

Unbelieveably, there are no schools listed as interested in Lightfoot on 247 Sports. I find this to be completely impossible. In fact, the Buffalo News article on Lightfoot’s transfer to SCA says he has offers from Buffalo, Canisius, Siena, Youngstown State, and Stony Brook. That article also says that Lightfoot averaged 17.9 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 5.3 assists as a freshman back in New York. I’m going to presume that he did not do as well as a sophomore at SCA since there were two high major 2020 guys and three top 150 2021 guys on the team with him. No fault to Lightfoot, obviously, but that’s also the reason why he went to SCA, too.

Here’s a four minute freshman highlight reel:

And six minutes of a game where he scored 30 points in December 2018:

If you’re feeling particularly crazy, check out the 13 (!) minute long video from his time at SCA this past year. There’s also a Hudl page with more highlights from SCA.

---

Okay, there were also four guys who got a call from Marquette on Day 1 of contact with the Class of 2022 after already getting a scholarship offer from Wojciechowski and his staff in the past. I think it’s worth noting that MU reached out to them immediately, but since they already have offers, I want to separate them from the future article that’s just the guys who got a phone call.

Judah Mintz

Mintz’s offer just popped up a few days before the coaching staff could call him up, so most of the info in our article there is still very up to date. The 6’3”, 165 point guard from the Washington, D.C. area is currently ranked #61 in the country per 247 Sports.

Elvis Nnaji

Marquette made an offer to Nnaji back in early May of this year. He still doesn’t have a 247 Sports page, so please go check out our article from six weeks ago for everything that we could track down about him at the time.

Ty Rodgers

The 6’6”, 195 pound Michigan native is currently ranked #65 in the country by 247 Sports. His offer also came in early May.

Prince Aligbe

Aligbe hails from Minnesota, which is rapidly turning into fertile recruiting ground for Wojciechowski. He also picked up his offer in early May and is currently ranked #58 in the country by 247 Sports.

---

Okay, now, finally, we can drop in the always popular scholarship chart.

For right now, we know that Marquette will be looking at one scholarship opening up after the 2021-22 season after Greg Elliott finishes his eligibility. However, with two spots sitting open for the 2020-21 season and three more opening up for 2021-22, it’s impossible to say at this point exactly how many spots Steve Wojciechowski will actually be trying to fill at that point. Heck, even figuring out what the situation will look like in November 2021 when the Class of 2022 can sign national letters of intent is nearly impossible to figure out. With nine new offers just this week, it seems clear that Wojciechowski is expecting to need to fill more than just one spot on the roster with this recruiting class. Given his track record at keeping recruits on campus till the end of their eligibility, that seems like the smartest move possible.