2/4 Big Ten Morning Power Bar: Penn State Earns First Commitment For 2019

Every week, BTPowerhouse’s Big Ten Morning Power Bar details what’s going on across the league on the recruiting trail.

In this week’s edition, take a look at a new commitment for Penn State and new offers out from Big Ten teams like Michigan State, Michigan, Illinois, Purdue, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Maryland.

-Penn State Earns First 2019 Commitment

The Penn State Nittany Lions received some welcomed news on Thursday afternoon with the commitment of 6-foot-8 forward Patrick Kelly. Take a look at his Twitter announcement below.

Kelly hails from Virginia and boasted offers from Providence, Richmond, and UNLV. Additional interest was coming from NC State, Ohio State, Purdue, and Georgetown. (247Sports)

Take a look at some of his highlights courtesy of Area Codes Basketball TV Network.

From the highlights, Kelly clearly possesses an ability to stretch the defense and handle passes from ball handlers in the lane. He will need to work on aggressiveness, strength and expanding his game, but Penn State could benefit from his shooting early in his career.

According to a scholarship chart from Verbal Commits, this could be Penn State’s only 2019 commit.

-2018 Offers

Many Big Ten teams are still active in trying to attract 2018 prospects and this week saw quite a bit of new offer activity.

Nebraska and Wisconsin both offered shooting guard Ochai Agbaji. The 6-foot-5 slasher has seen his recruitment blow up with offers from Oregon, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon State and Texas A&M. Kansas has also visited him multiple times but has not offered at this point.

As his highlight video below shows, Agbaji is long, athletic and excelled in doing just about everything. We’ll track this recruitment and see if Kansas jumps into it. If so, it seems hard for him to turn that down.

(courtesy of HoopFocus)

Wisconsin wasn’t done with their 2018 focus as they also offered Simeon point guard Xavier Pinson. Like Agbaji, Pinson has blown up a bit this season and now has offers from Georgetown, Missouri, Wisconsin and additional interest from Maryland, Dayton, and DePaul. Check out some of his highlights courtesy of InTheGymHoops.

-2019 Offers

Michigan kicked things off this week with an offer to top-150 shooting guard Joe Girard. Don’t be fooled by Girard’s lack of height for a shooting guard (6-foot-1), Girard can fill it up. In addition to the Michigan offer, Girard broke Lance Stevenson’s New York high school scoring record with a 44 point performance. That performance was actually below his insane season average of 50.1 points per game.

Additional offers for Girard include BYU, Oklahoma, Penn State and Boston College amongst others. Take a look at some video from last spring’s Nike EYBL event.

(courtesy of New Recruit Media LLC Nix)

Next up was Michigan State offering top 50 La Lumiere prospect Isaiah Stewart. The 6-foot-8 big man has offers from just about everybody, but will likely cut his list of schools here soon. According to Rivals, Texas, Xavier, Notre Dame, and Duke have stood out the most in his recruitment so far. It might be tough for the Spartans to catch up given the formidable recruiting opponents looking into Stewart, but we’ll update Stewart’s situation once he decides to cut his list of schools. In the meantime, take a look at some highlights of him dunking on people.

(courtesy of Rivals)

-2020 Offers

The only 2020 offer out this week comes courtesy of the Boilermakers. Matt Painter’s coaching staff extended a scholarship offer to guard Trey Galloway. The Indiana-native is currently ranked no. 75 according to Rivals. As you can see from the highlights below, Galloway already possesses a deadly outside shot and should be able to improve his offensive game as he gets stronger.

Purdue is Galloway’s first Power 5 offer, but expect the Hoosiers (amongst others) to jump in at some point as well.

(courtesy of Inside The Hall)

-2021 Offers

Maryland sent out the only 2021 offer this week with it going to 6-foot-10 big man Javonte Brown. Not much is known at this point in Brown’s recruitment, but this could be his first Power 5 offer. Take a look at some early highlights of Brown.

(courtesy of Universal Hoops)

Overall

This was obviously a loaded week in Big Ten recruiting news. We’ll continue to update where these recruitments go and the targets that come into the forefront. Check back again next week.