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Marquette Men’s Basketball Makes Two New Scholarship Offers

Shaka Smart and his staff continue to work on the Class of 2024.

Marquette v Xavier Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images

It’s the summer, which means it’s the really good recruiting times, which means regular recruiting articles here on Anonymous Eagle. It’s only been a few days since the last one, and Shaka Smart and his Marquette staff have already fired off a few new scholarship offers in the Class of 2024.

Drew McKenna

247 Sports lists McKenna as a 6’6”, 185 pound small forward in the Class of 2024. He attends Glenelg Country School in Ellicott City, Maryland. We should, at this point, note that McKenna’s own Twitter bio says he’s 6’8” and either a shooting guard or a small forward. I think we could call that a western suburb of Baltimore, but I’m more than happy to be corrected on the particulars of Maryland geography. Related: Someone tell me if Baltimore qualifies as part of the DMV area.

Anyway, McKenna doesn’t currently have any ratings or rankings from 247 Sports, neither in the Composite nor the internal systems. Still, having a page is better than not having one. His list of scholarship offers on his page is fascinating. Sure, there’s Maryland, along with George Mason, George Washington, and Howard. All DMV area programs, so this all checks out. But there’s also Butler, DePaul, and UConn from the Big East, plus Illinois and Rutgers repping the Big Ten. A skim through McKenna’s tweets pulls up Georgetown and Virginia Tech just since June 15th. 247 Sports talked to him about a week before Marquette made their offer, or at least before McKenna tweeted about it, and it seems that Villanova and Xavier are involved as well.

I think it’s clear that it’s just a matter of time before he gets that rating and ranking.

Here’s a scouting report from 247 from the middle of June:

Looking long term, McKenna may have been one of the most intriguing players we saw from the class of 2024. He’s a wing with 6-foot-6 size, some skill and lots of upside. He had some nice attacks off the dribble, made some great reads as a passer and showed the ability to get into the paint and make plays. He looks primed for a big summer and is one who could enter talks for the national rankings at some point down the road.

And a 247 report from four days after that:

This was the first time seeing McKenna and he has good size at 6-foot-8 with versatility on both sides of the ball. McKenna has had an extremely efficient weekend shooting the ball, scoring within the offense by coming off screens, and using his size to shoot over defenders. McKenna has tons of upside and is someone who is definitely in contention to enter the 2024 rankings next time around.

It appears that McKenna doesn’t have a Hudl page.... but his MaxPreps page links to a bunch of videos that look like they’re from Hudl, so there’s that, then.

Somtochukwu Cyril

Maybe it’s just how he’s holding his body in the picture, but at a glance, I’m absolutely not surprised that Cyril is currently ranked #21 in the country in the Class of 2024 by 247 Sports’ Composite system. That makes the 6’11”, 240 pounder — yes, he’s just done with sophomore year of high school and he’s bigger than anyone on Marquette’s 2022-23 roster — the third best center prospect in the country, trailing only Derik Queen (#6 overall) and Jayden Williams (#11 overall). To the surprise of no one, Cyril is also the top prospect in the state of Tennessee..... because he’s also the only player rated and ranked by 247 in the state at the moment.

For whatever reason, his offer list is pretty sedate so far, at least for a guy that big at that age and that highly ranked. Sure, yeah, Kansas lead the way, and of course Tennessee and Memphis are involved because they’d be stupid not to be. Florida, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, Georgetown..... and that’s it. I presume that this will not stay this way for long.

[finds Cyril’s personal Twitter] Yep, he’s got an offer from Michigan now, too.

Hey, I got distracted watching Cyril’s highlight reels on his Twitter. Now you will, too. Please remember that he’s 6’11” and 240 pounds.

Sweet Christmas.


Scholarship chart time!

Marquette projects to have three scholarships potentially opening up for the Class of 2024, and perhaps a fourth rolling over from 2023-24. It’s going to depend on what happens to the trio of seniors from that year and what they want to do with their COVID bonus season. I will say this much: It certainly looks like McKenna and Cyril would be at least adequate roster replacements for Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Oso Ighodaro, if they were to wrap up their time at Marquette.