Class Of 2022 Point Guard Will Richardson Gets An Offer From Marquette

We’ve spent a lot of time in the second half of June talking about new scholarship offers from the Marquette men’s basketball office. We’re going to keep heading down that train track as the offers keep popping up. The newest one is for Class of 2022 point guard Will Richardson.

Richardson is listed by 247 Sports as a 6’2”, 160 pound point guard, so it’s nice to see 247 agree with Rivals here. They diverge from there, as Rivals has Richardson currently ranked #117 in the country while 247 puts him in the top 100 in the Class of 2022 Composite Rankings at #91. Interestingly, Richardson is not ranked in 247’s internal system at the moment, so you’d figure that would stand to affect his ranking when that eventually changes.

Anyway, Richardson is currently ranked #22 amongst point guards in his recruiting class. I’m fascinated by the idea that there are 22 point guards in the 247 Composite top 100 right now. 25% of the top players in the class, give or take, are point guards? Seems not right. Richardson is also ranked #3 in the state of New Jersey, where he attends Bergen Catholic. 247 and Rivals both list his hometown as Oradell, NJ, which is where Bergen is located. Until told differently, I’m going to presume that’s the case, but given that we’re talking about the New York City metro area, it’s not a guarantee.

247 says that Vanderbilt is the only other school to offer Richardson a spot on the roster so far. However, the always in depth NJ.com advises us that he also has a high major offer from Penn State along with bids from Columbia , UMass, and Stony Brook. If he’s going to remain a top 100 prospect — he popped in at #66 in September 2019, but dropped out of the rankings in April 2020 before landing at #91 in late June — then it’s safe to say that there will be more high major offers in Richardson’s future.

Again we turn to NJ.com, as their high school coverage provides us with stats. According to what they have listed, Richardson averaged nearly 19 points per game as a sophomore as Bergen went 22-7 this past season. Their data is clearly incomplete, as I find it hard to believe that Richardson averaged less than a rebound per game and exactly one assist per game in 27 appearances. In fact, NJ.com named him Player of the Year in Bergen’s conference. That feels like a “definitely did more rebounding and assisting” type of thing. Richardson averaged 22.7 points per game as Bergen won three games to win the North Jersey Non-Public A title. REMINDER: This was during his sophomore season.

Here’s a three minute sophomore year highlight reel that was posted on YouTube in mid-May.

Let’s go to the scholarship chart!

Richardson is a Class of 2022 guy, so all we know right now for that class is that Marquette currently projects to only looking to replace Greg Elliott in that recruiting class. However, we’re about 16 months away from when the 2022 guys will be able to sign letters of intent, and who knows what will happen with MU’s roster between now and then. The Golden Eagles project to have four more spots open for the Class of 2021 after Kameron Jones committed the other day. How head coach Steve Wojciechowski deals with those spots is going to affect how the Golden Eagles need to approach the Class of 2022, but we’re still a long way off from having a clear picture on any of that.

If I had to guess, Marquette will end up with at least two spots to fill for 2022, or one other spot in addition to Elliott. Since Elliott is a guard, and perhaps more of a point guard than anything else, Richardson would be a logical direction to go for a prospect in that recruiting class. 2022-23 projects to be the senior year for D.J. Carton and Symir Torrence, so Marquette will be in need of veteran backcourt players the following year. Bringing in a top 100 guard like Richardson should be a priority for the fall of 2022.