Marquette Offers A Scholarship To Class of 2022 Guard Chase Ross

Shaka Smart remains hard at work figuring out who the next member of the Marquette men’s basketball team will be. The Golden Eagles currently don’t have anyone committed for the Class of 2022, but the coaching staff appears to be hard at work to fix that. On Saturday, Chase Ross, a guard in that recruiting class, announced that he has received an offer from MU and the new head coach.

We have to explain a few things here. Chase Ross is from Dallas, Texas, as you might have been able to guess from his Twitter username. However, he attends Cushing Academy, which is in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. It’s in what I would call north central Massachusetts, and it’s very close to New Hampshire.

He’s a 6’4”, 185 pound shooting guard according to 247 Sports.... and that’s about where the useful information from the recruiting site ends. He’s not currently rated or ranked in the Composite or the internal setups that 247 Sports has, and seeing as he’s a 2022 prospect, that’s definitely very interesting. However, this might be explained by Rivals listing him as a 2021 prospect when he was attending Plano West back in Texas and Prep Hoops calling him a 2021 prospect whilst at Cushing. If you scroll back through Ross’ own tweets to August of 2020, you start seeing him referenced as a 2021 prospect. If he’s a recent transition to 2022, then that explains why he’s not rated or ranked in the class yet.

Every single scholarship offer for Ross listed by 247 Sports has come in since June 26th. He had offers before that according to his tweets, including one from Fairfield in September of 2020 that is listed as coming in on June 26th of this year. Rutgers was his first high major offer on June 27th, and Texas A&M waded into the water on July 10th. Again, if Ross is a recent shift to 2022, then this may just be the beginning of high major interest in him.

Another thing working against him in terms of recruiting: He hasn’t been playing much official organized basketball. In late June, CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander attended the 2021 New England Prep School Athletic Council showcase, and since Cushing is part of NEPSAC, Ross was in action and talked to Norlander. His first game in the showcase was just his fifth organized game in over a year. 21 points, six rebounds, four assists and a pair of steals tells you how things went even after so little action, but it’s nearly impossible for scouts and coaches to see you perform if you’re literally not in action.

There doesn’t appear to be any video that’s useful to embed here — unless you want to watch a dunk contest — but Ross does have a Hudl page. The most recent upload was on April 19th, but remember, he only played in five games over the previous 18 months.

Scholarship chart time!

Darryl Morsell will only be with Marquette for one season, and Greg Elliott might not take his COVID-bonus season or might not take it at MU. As such, the Golden Eagles are in need of guards for the 2022-23 season. Ross is a guard, so that seems like a fit. I’m slightly twitchy about a guy reclassifying backwards much like taking a post-grad year, but that’s just more about Steve Wojciechowski’s failed experiment with Dexter Akanno than anything else. If Ross made the reclassification move because he didn’t do much playing over the past year and thus feels like he fell behind, then that’s probably more about that than anything else. With that said, Ross wasn’t a high major prospect before shifting to 2022, or at least that’s how it appears. Can he be a Big East contributor 15 months from now? Shaka Smart seems to think so.