Marquette Offers Scholarships To Seth Trimble & Leon Bond

It’s been a little over two weeks since Shaka Smart was officially announced as the new Marquette men’s basketball coach. He’s been a little bit busy in the interim between getting to know his existing roster, setting up a workout schedule for said existing roster, assembling his assistant coaching staff, and reaching out to potential transfer targets. If we’re being quite honest, one of the last things a new head coach needs to worry about is extending scholarship offers to high school juniors.

And yet, it is something that Smart needed to worry about eventually, and he’s gotten around to working on the long term future of Golden Eagles basketball. We have two new Class of 2022 scholarship offers to discuss, and it is probably not on accident that both young men are from Wisconsin, specifically the Milwaukee area.

Seth Trimble

Trimble is a 6’3”, 185 pound point guard out of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, which is about a 25 minute drive from Marquette’s campus. He’s currently ranked #80 in the country by the 247 Sports Composite system, which makes him the #14 point guard in the country and the top prospect in Wisconsin by a decently healthy margin over Learic Davis.

It’s at this point that I think we need to discuss the fact that there is not an article on Trimble getting an offer from Marquette before now. The old coaching staff reached out to Trimble when they were able to start initiating contact with 2022 prospects last summer, and Trimble has been on the invite list to Marquette Madness in the past. But he never got that scholarship offer.... even though 247 has had him as a top 100 prospect ever since late July of 2020. I don’t know what the argument was for not offering a scholarship to a top 100 player who lives in the Milwaukee area, but it hasn’t happened up until now.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of high major prospects getting involved with Trimble. Creighton already has an offer out to him, for crying out loud. Illinois and Wisconsin are probably the next two biggest names involved, but there’s Arizona State, Iowa State, and USC in there too according to 247.

WisSports.net has 23 games worth of stats from this past season for Trimble. He averaged 23.3 points per game for Menomonee Falls, which includes a 45 point outing against Whitnall. He shot 55% from the field, 35% from long range, and 75% from the free throw line. He also averaged 5.9 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.6 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game.

Here’s how Trimble described how he plays in an Q&A with Jake Weingarten:

“My game, I think I’m a really great all-around point guard. I like to get out in transition and make plays and get up and down the floor and score on the fast break. I love to step out and shoot the three. The defense has also been a big part of my game so I prioritize that too.”

I’ve got two videos for you. One is four minutes from this past January:

And the other is three-ish minutes from March.

Leon Bond

247 Sports lists Bond as a 6’5”, 180 pound small forward. He has Milwaukee listed as his hometown, and he attends Wauwatosa East High School. Bond is currently not rated or ranked in 247’s Composite system, however they have squared him up both at his position and in the state in their internal system. 247 says he’s a three-star prospect, and they have him as the 53rd best small forward in the recruiting class and the #5 prospect in the state of Wisconsin. That means that their internal rankings has Bond one notch better than Steven Clay, who plays with Seth Trimble at Menomonee Falls. It’s not a perfect cross-over, but if you compare where Bond is in the state and at his position and translate it to the Composite rankings of nearby guys, then Bond is somewhere in the vicinity of #200 in the country.

We turn once again to WisSports.net, where Bond is listed at 6’6” tall. They have 21 games worth of stats for him, and he averaged 11.8 points per game for Tosa East. Bond has a shooting split of 57%, 40%, and 72%, but we have to point out that WisSports only shows him taking five three-pointers all season long. We’re still a long way aways from Bond stepping onto any college campus as an enrolled prospect, but if he’s going to play small forward/wing at the collegiate level, he’s going to have to hit that three-ball with enough reliability to be taken seriously. Elsewheres on the court, Bond averaged 5.9 rebounds per game this past season along with 1.5 assists and 1.2 blocks per game.

Relative to Bond’s status as an unranked player, Eric Bossi recently got a chance to observe him in action at the NY2LA Swish ‘N’ Dish event. Here’s what he had to say:

Playing with the JH1 program, Bond was the biggest stock riser of the weekend.

To go with his size, Bond has long arms, bouncy athleticism and he’s got a motor that never stops running. Bond plays hard defensively, crashes the glass and is always trying to find his way to the rim in transition. Offensively he loves to probe and attack along the baseline, he’s got some low post game and can make shots from 12-17 feet. He doesn’t yet look to take many deep jumpers and said that he’s got to get better from beyond the three-point line but his shot looks relatively clean.

Simply put, Bond looks and plays the part of a high major player. Based on his play over the past few days, he’ll be under consideration to make a move into the 247Sports top 150 when we update the rankings and if he keeps it up he could enter as a four-star prospect.

Virginia Tech is the only other major program to have offered Bond a scholarship at this point, so it’s probably good news for Shaka Smart to get in line as soon as he possible could.

Here’s a three minute junior year mixtape:

And a different four-plus minute highlight reel from Bond’s junior year:

Let’s head to the scholarship chart!

We have to start any discussion of recruiting at this point with the understand that the current Marquette roster for 2021-22 bears little resemblance to what it will probably look like when the ball is tipped for the first time in November. Between transfer options and Texas signees being released from their letters of intent, there’s a lot of possibilities to change things between now and when the season starts.

Any changes between now and when the 2021-22 season starts obviously holds a lot of weight on what Smart and his staff are going to emphasize for their first full official recruiting class at Marquette. With that said, getting talented local kids on the team is never a bad decision, and that’s what you have in both Trimble and Bond.