NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing Nico Mannion’s final four schools

Elite 2019 NCAA basketball recruit Nico Mannion has cut his list to four schools: Arizona, Marquette, Duke, and Villanova. How might he fit at each school?

Recruiting is an extremely important aspect of NCAA basketball. Either in the form of high school prospects or transfers, coaches from around the country need to constantly be on their toes for bringing in potential stars at their respective schools. With the 2018 class solidified for just about every school, the focus has already turned to the 2019 group of prospects. Near the forefront of this is Nico Mannion, a point guard rated within the top-20 of the class.

As a player, Mannion is a well-rounded guard with star potential on both ends of the floor. He can attack the basket, shoot from distance, create for others, and is also a tenacious defender. At 6-foot-3, he has plenty of size and is still only 17 years old, meaning that he still has plenty of room to develop as well.

For a long time, Mannion was seen as one of the top players in the 2020 recruiting class. Yet, on June 4, he released that he would be reclassifying to the 2019 class, moving him up the list of priorities for several schools on his list. In fact, in addition to his reclassification announcement, Mannion also released his top-10 schools. Since then, Mannion was cut his list down to four teams, eliminating the following programs: Kansas, Oregon, UCLA, USC, Utah, and Vanderbilt.

After these cuts, Arizona, Marquette, Duke, and Villanova are the only teams that remain. These four schools all represent major conference who have extensive NCAA Tournament experience. In addition, each school has had success with elite point guards in recent history. So, with this being said, how might Mannion fit with each school in his final four?