And so, Megan Duffy’s 2024 recruiting class for Marquette is officially vacated.
After Megan Duffy officially announced her career change to coaching at Virginia Tech, there was rapid fire movement with her 2024 recruiting class at Marquette. Kayl Petersen and Jaeda Wilson announced their newly open recruitment pretty quick, but there was never an announcement from Leila Wells, the third member of that class.
With that said, no one’s making her announce that she’s open, and if Wells was just intending on following Duffy to Virginia Tech if there was space for her, then there’s no reason to announce either. Perhaps that’s what happened, as she announced her commitment to Virginia Tech on Sunday.
Romans 8:28 pic.twitter.com/zS22ejBTWJ
— Leila Wells (@LeilaRose2024) April 21, 2024
I do have questions here. “Grateful to the Marquette staff for their support and professionalism” paired with “thank you to Megan Duffy for welcoming me with open arms” is weird, right? We can just say it’s weird because it sounds like these are two different groups of people and there wasn’t a pre-existing relationship going from one place to another, right?
Anyway….. Wells committed to Duffy at Marquette back in July of 2023 and then signed her letter of intent this past November. It was a pretty whirlwind recruiting process a year ago, as Wells didn’t even have an offer from Duffy until late May. At the time, I wondered how much new assistant coach Khadijah Rushdan had to do with Wells’ recruitment, but for the moment, Rushdan is not listed as a staff member at VaTech. In retrospect, maybe less than I thought? Or maybe Duffy’s relationship with her is that strong nearly a year later.
In case you were wondering about the rest of Duffy’s recruiting class: Jaeda Wilson committed to play at Georgetown starting this fall, so Marquette will be seeing more of her. It seems that Kayl Petersen hasn’t made a choice, but as a top 100 prospect, I’m sure she’s not lacking for options and as such, it makes sense for her to take her time.
And now, the newly updated scholarship chart.
All five of the women listed there were at Cara Consuegra’s introductory press conference, and there’s been no new notices about any transfers leaving the program since Marquette announced their new coach. It’s worth noting that Lee Volker, who did enter the transfer portal, was also in attendance at the press conference. While less than 10% of portal entries end up back at the institution that they started at, it’s not impossible. Until we get some sort of confirmation that Volker is going to be on the roster in 2024-25, we’re going to leave her off the scholarship chart.