Which Class Of 2028 Prospects Are Priorities For Marquette Men’s Basketball?

· Yahoo Sports

STOP PLAYING IN TRAFFIC, IGGY | Credit: Marquette University

It’s a yearly tradition: On June 15th, NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball coaches can initiate contact with prospects that just finished up their sophomore year of high school. That leads to a flurry of updates of what schools made a phone call to which prospects right out of the gate and that gives us a picture of the recruiting targets across the country.

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Well, it usually does that. Because Twitter is about as reliable as a house of cards in a hurricane these days, all I got was an error message when I tried to search for updates on Tuesday morning. That moved things along to Wednesday morning…. and after scrolling alllll the way back to posts dated on June 14th, I found…..

…… eight posts talking about Marquette’s coaching staff making contact. And four of them aren’t even from the 15th! They’re from the 16th!

Is this a “Shaka Smart and assistants are being much more targeted about their high school recruiting” thing or is this “people aren’t using Twitter any more and thus there’s less and less useful information there every day” thing? I’m willing to believe both of them.

Let’s drop in the scholarship chart so we’re all on the same page as to where the Golden Eagles are going with the Class of 2028….

As you can see, for right now, there are six open spots for the Class of 2028. That’s probably faulty information, as two of them are open for the Class of 2027 and Marquette doesn’t have any commitments for high school prospects for the 2027-28 season right now. I feel pretty safe saying there’s going to be at least one player — freshman or otherwise! — added that’s going to be taking up a spot that will then not be available for the fall of 2028.

Alrighty, let’s go in chronological order then….

Derek Swartz

247 Sports lists Derek Swartz as a 6’5”, 190 pound shooting guard from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He is ranked at #61 in their internal rankings and #60 in the 247 Sports Composite. 247 lists just four offers for him so far: Boston College, Georgetown, Oklahoma State, and Rutgers.

Kingsley Rogers

It appears that Kingsley Rogers doesn’t have a 247 Sports page at this point or a Verbal Commits page either. That’s wild. Prep Hoops lists him as a 6’4” shooting guard. This has nothing to do with Rogers, but I found it fascinating: The Williston Northampton School is in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Northampton, MA, is five miles away.

Tai Bell

247 Sports lists Tai Bell as a 6’3”, 200 pound point guard. He attends Mater Lakes Academy, which is in Hialeah, Florida. His Twitter bio says the son of 12 year NBA veteran Raja Bell hails from Fort Lauderdale, which is local enough to make this not a boarding school type of academy at face value. 247 ranks Bell at #24 in both their internal system as well as the Composite rankings.

There is a loooooooong list of teams that have offered Bell a scholarship already, which should not be a surprise to you after picking up that he’s a top 25 prospect. Houston and Purdue are the most prominent names on the list in terms of nationally relevant programs.

Nolyn Proudfoot

We have to note right away that City Rocks is Damarius Owens’ former grassroots team and Western Reserve Academy is where both Owens and Royce Parham finished up high school. This is probably not a coincidence.

No 247 Sports or Verbal Commits page for Proudfoot, but his Prep Hoops page says he’s a 6’3” combo guard.

David Douglas

247 Sports lists David Douglas as a 6’1”, 165 pound combo guard out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Having a page is an improvement on a couple of the guys that we’ve already talked about here, so that’s good news. Less so that 247 is not rating or ranking Douglas at this time, but one thing at a time.

Kinston Knueppel

Yes, this is the younger brother of former Duke Blue Devils player and current Charlotte Hornets player Kon Knueppel. Yes, Marquette went pretty deep on the recruiting process with Kon back in the day, so there’s familiarity to both sides of the equation.

No, Kinston Knueppel is not currently regarded as the kind of prospect that his brother was. 247 Sports lists him as a 6’5”, 190 pound shooting guard, but they do not rate or rank him at this time, and I think it’s safe to say that he’s not taking anyone by surprise at this point.

Kareem Smith-Bey

247 Sports lists Kareem Smith-Bey (that’s how they type it out, with the hyphen there) as a 6’4”, 170 pound shooting guard. He attends St. John’s College High School in Washington, D.C. 247 says he’s the #59 prospect in the country, while their Composite rankings have him at #68.

Smith-Bey’s offer list is still pretty local: Maryland, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Old Dominion, George Washington, and Georgetown, although Mississippi State found their way in there somehow. I would imagine that the limited scope of attention is about to come to an end as long as he stays a top 75 prospect.

Nico Antoniacci

247 Sports lists Nico Antoniacci as a 6’2”, 170 pound combo guard. He’s from Taylor, Pennsylvania (in the northeast corner of the state), where he attends Riverside High School. Antoniacci doesn’t have a rating or a ranking attatched to him by 247 Sports yet, but a scroll through his Twitter account indicates that won’t last for long: He was the Pennsylvania 3A Player of the Year and was invited to the NBPA Top 100 Camp.

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