2015 Sun Prairie Point Guard Nick Noskowiak verbally committed to Marquette yesterday after his unofficial visit with the Golden Eagles. Noskowiak, a sophomore at Sun Prairie High School, is widely thought of as a Top-100 player in the Class of 2015. Wisconsin and Bo Ryan were showing serious interest in Noskowiak, but had yet to offer him.
When I asked our friend and recruiting expert Evan Flood from 247 Sports if Wisconsin had a chance to sway Noskowiak's commitment he responded, "Wisconsin won't recruit a committed player. Unless he changes his mind down the road, it's over."
Noskowiak's sudden decision comes as a surprise to me, as top recruits (especially those as young as Noskowiak) usually choose to let their recruitment process go slowly. Noskowiak would have been a great fit for Bo Ryan's system, as he's a very talented player and a smart decision maker.
In all likeliness, Noskowiak will become the fourth Top-100 ranked player in the past eight years Bo Ryan has let slip out of Dane County to rival Marquette, joining the likes of Wesley Matthews Jr., Jerrone Maymon, and Vander Blue (all from Madison Memorial). This raises the question, should Badger fans be worried about Marquette's recent trend of stealing top local and in-state recruits from Wisconsin?
Absolutely not.
Marquette surely has acquired a number of talented in-state recruits, but Bo Ryan has done an equally good, if not better job of getting great players from Wisconsin. Do the names Sam Dekker and Bronson Koenig ring a bell? Not to mention players from the past like Devin Harris.
While allowing Marquette to steal great talent out of Dane County on a regular basis is disappointing, Bo Ryan has more than made up for it. When Wesley Matthews Jr. spurned the Badgers for MU in 2005, Ryan responded by reeling in Jason Bohannon and Traevon Hughes the next season. Remember when Vander Blue de-committed from Wisconsin in 2010? That opened up a spot for Josh Gasser to join the program.
Noskowiak choosing Marquette could be very disappointing to some Badger fans, but Bo and his staff will have a chance to make it up to them with the ridiculous amount of talent Wisconsin High School Basketball will have in the upcoming years.
That's perhaps the biggest reason to not go into panic mode, the state of Wisconsin now regularly produces talent that teams from all over the country, not just the local Midwest area, want. So, there's going to be times when Wisconsin doesn't win out on the top of the heap, but what's different is the overall talent pool is much deeper in state than it's ever been before. Losing out on one big target here or there isn't the end of the world, besides, Noskowiak wasn't even offered yet by Wisconsin.
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