Marquette Is In Tyrese Hunter’s Top Ten

It’s time for a break from scholarship offer recruiting news and time to take a look at some notable progress for Marquette men’s basketball on the recruiting trails. On Monday afternoon, Wisconsin Class of 2021 prospect Tyrese Hunter announced his top ten schools, and yes, Marquette is on his list. The Golden Eagles are joined by Arizona State, UConn, Florida, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Iowa State, Miami, Texas Tech, and Virginia Tech.

Hunter is a 6’1”, 160 pound point guard out of Racine, Wisconsin. He attends St. Catherine’s High School down there, and is a member of the Class of 2021. 247 Sports currently says that Hunter is the #81 prospect in the country in his recruiting class. He’s also the #13 point guard in the class, which puts him third in an in-a-row quartet of Marquette prospects at the position along with Carter Whitt, TyTy Washington, and Bensley Joseph. Hunter is the #2 prospect in the state for his year in school, and being the next best guy after the #2 player in the country (Patrick Baldwin, btw) is nothing to sneeze at.

Marquette officially offered a scholarship to Hunter right at the end of February of this year. Hunter was on a visit to Marquette that coincided with the home finale against Seton Hall at the time that head coach Steve Wojciechowski made the offer. Quite honestly, it was a little surprising that it took that long for the Golden Eagles to pull the trigger. Marquette had been reported as heading out to watch Hunter regularly throughout the 2019-20 St. Cat’s season, so I’m not quite sure exactly why it took so long if they were spending all that time scouting him.

According to Wisconsin Sports Network, Hunter averaged 21.3 points, 6.6 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 3.0 steals per game for the Angels. They were a perfect 25-0 on the year after beating St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy (and recent MU offeree Brandin Podziemski) in the WIAA sectional round before the pandemic brought the season to a halt.

I don’t have any insight into Hunter’s recruiting process to this point, but I can tell you this: It’s probably good for Marquette that 247 Sports didn’t realize that UConn, Georgia, Texas Tech, and Virginia Tech had offered him a scholarship up until Monday. Go look at his activity log! All four squads were added to his offer list on Monday. Heck, 247 didn’t even list Marquette in there until mid-May.

The Class of 2021 can sign letters of intent this coming November, so I would imagine that we’ll get some movement on Hunter’s list between now and then. If not actually committing to a school, then you’d figure that at least a cutdown of some fashion is on the way. It’s important to note that Hunter is calling this a top ten, not a final ten, so he’s at least leaving the door open to adding bigger names to the list in the future.

Let’s look at the Marquette scholarship chart.

With Koby McEwen coming off the books after the 2020-21 school year, Marquette will be in need of another ball handling guard on the roster. You can’t do much better than a top 100 point guard prospect in that regard, so Hunter fits right into what the Golden Eagles need for their 2021 recruiting class. It also doesn’t hurt for Marquette to be heavily involved with a top two prospect in the state. You can’t help but notice that MU is the only one of the four Division 1 men’s basketball programs in Wisconsin on Hunter’s list. There’s various reasons for that, most notably that Wisconsin already have three prospects committed in the class, but keeping top 100 talent in state and specifically in Milwaukee is a good way to go for the Golden Eagles.

The only other big need for MU in that recruiting class right now is “good basketball players,” as it appears that Wojciechowski and his staff will have five open scholarship spots to fill. There are currently two open spots for this coming season, and there’s no reason to expect that to change over the next year. Maaaaaaaaybe a mid-year transfer as the space is there for someone, but even expecting an impact guy to up and change schools mid-year is a fool’s errand.