Marquette Women’s Basketball Gets A Commitment from Emily La Chapell

It’s been over three months since we talked about Marquette Golden Eagles women’s basketball recruiting on these here internet pages. I feel like maybe we missed something along the way. Seems like head coach Megan Duffy and her staff might have made a scholarship offer or 12 in the meantime.

In any case, scholarship offers are ethereal things that sometimes go nowhere at all. Verbal commitments, on the other hand, are much more tangible things to talk about, and that’s what we’ve got here. On Wednesday evening, Wisconsin native and Class of 2022 prospect Emily La Chapell made her pledge to play for Duffy and the Golden Eagles.

Here’s the text on her commitment notice:

I would like to thank my family for their endless support, sacrifice, and for being my rock. Thank you to my WI Flight coaches and my trainers for the time you spent developing my game. Thank you to my youth coaches and High school coaching staff for the countless time and effort you’ve invested in me as a player and as a person. Huge shoutout to the community of Appleton East and to all of my teammates for continuing to grow my love for the game. I am beyond excited and blessed to announce that I will be staying home in Wisconsin and playing under @CoachDuffy and staff at Marquette University! #WeAreMarquette #LeaveYourMarq

WisSports.Net lists La Chapell ias a 5’11” guard/wing. She attends Appleton East High School, and she has been remarkably consistent for the Patriots in her three years of high school hoops so far. Across her 71 game prep career, La Chapell is averaging 17.8 points per game. WisSports shows her averaging 52% from the field, 39% from long range, and 77% from the free throw line in that stretch, but those numbers may not be perfect. After all, her freshman year field goal stats of eight makes on zero attempts is a liiiiitle bit confusing. Still, that’s some pretty good numbers even if there’s some nonsense going on. WisSports is a little bit more sketchy on deeper numbers, as they only have 47 games from sophomore and junior year for rebounding numbers, but 7.4 per game across the last two years is pretty good. Same goes for her 5.0 assists, 1.8 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game. Appleton East has gone 58-14 in the regular season during La Chapell’s time on the roster, and she’s been a major component of what the varsity squad has been doing from the get go. Marquette first offered La Chapell a scholarship back in May 2019, not long after Megan Duffy was hired as MU’s new head coach. I think we can clearly say that Duffy was on top of her game here.

In terms of rankings and ratings, things are a little bit hard to read. ESPN doesn’t have a page for her yet. Prospects Nation does have a page, and they grade La Chapell out as a four star wing prospect. PN also has her on their Watch List for the Class of 2022, which is notable. They don’t have anyone officially ranked anywhere right now, only the aforementioned Watch List. There are six five-star players on the list and 28 4.5-star players. 26 women are in the four-star section at the moment, and if my math is right, that means Prospects Nation has La Chapell somewhere in between #35 and #60 in the country at the moment.

That seems good.

La Chapell is one of just two Wisconsin prospects on PN’s Watch List, with Aaliyah Smith from Fitchburg as the other one. According to PN’s list, La Chapell is the second player to commit to a Big East team, joining five-star post Isuneh Brady who has opted for — surprise — Connecticut. However, I know that’s not 100% accurate because fellow five-star prospect Ayanna Patterson is also pledged to the Huskies, but PN just hasn’t actually listed that commitment yet.

I don’t have anything useable on YouTube to embed here, but this is the most recent thing that comes up in a Twitter search for highlights of La Chapell:

She does have a Hudl page, though, and it was last updated just 13 days ago with her junior year highlight reel. That bad boy runs you over seven minutes long if you’ve got the free time.

Let’s go to the freshly updated scholarship chart!

La Chapell is Marquette’s first commitment for the Class of 2022, but there’s a lot of questions about how large that class is going to be when we get there. Based on Duffy apparently sitting pat on her two player 2021 recruiting class, that would leave Marquette two scholarships under the limit for that season and thus for the next year as well. Thus, we could see the Golden Eagles add as many as two more women to replace Chloe Marotta as the only outgoing senior.

However, the 2020-21 roster all having a bonus season due to the pandemic throws all of this up in the air. While the scholarships will still be available for 2022-23 no matter what Selena Lott and Lauren Van Kleunen elect to do going forward, there is the possibility that Marotta could return for 2022-23, and at that point, she would take up an official scholarship spot for Marquette. That would leave the Golden Eagles only able to add one other freshman next to La Chapell.

Or maybe Duffy doesn’t want to fill her roster to the 15 player maximum! Who can say? We’re still eight months away from La Chapell signing a letter of intent and a year away from Marotta making a decision about her future. There’s a lot of directions this can go — I didn’t even try to puzzle through MU bringing in any transfers! — so we’ll wait and see what comes next.