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Over this past weekend in-state wing James Graham (Milwaukee) out of Nicolet High School announced he was pushing back his originial Sunday commitment date to this coming Friday. While it was widely assumed he’d be choosing the Maryland Terrapins, Auburn was apparently coming on strong and the in-state Badgers, despite offering late, had made a nice charge too.
However, on Wednesday afternoon Graham tweeted that he was choosing the Terrapins over his other finalists, Auburn, Memphis and Wisconsin, and that was that.
Thank you to all the schools who have recruited me !!!! Let’s get to work terp nation pic.twitter.com/oKUsAzUWzY
— James Graham III (@JamesGrahamIII2) August 19, 2020
The Terps were the first high major offer that Graham received and that seemed to have struck a chord with the 247 Composite 3-star SF. Maryland now has the No. 8 recruiting class in the country for 2021 with Graham joining 4-stars PF Julian Reese (Baltimore, Md.) and SG Ike Cornish (Greenville, S.C.).
As far as Wisconsin’s recruiting strategy goes for the rest of 2021...well...they may be finished. The Badgers 2021 class hasn’t changed since late September 2019: they’ve got a trio of top-150 players in PG Chucky Hepburn (Bellevue, Neb.) and PFs Matthew Mors (Yankton, S.D.) and Chris Hodges (Schaumburg, Ill.). There are still three offers out for the 2021 class:
- 5-star CG Hunter Sallis, Omaha, Neb.
- 4-star PF Bryce Hopkins, Oak Park, Ill.
- 3-star PF Markus Ilver, Estonia (plays ball at Massanutten Military Academy in Virginia)
While UW still has an open scholarship available it might just make the most sense to bank it for 2022 and even out the classes a bit. If one of these guys starts heating up for Wisconsin, we’ll let you know!