The Memphis basketball squad further bolstered its 2019 class with the addition of former Duke commit and four-star guard Boogie Ellis.
The Memphis basketball team and its head coach, former NBA star Penny Hardaway, are making some serious noise with their 2019 recruiting class. The latest premier prospect to pledge his services to the Tigers is four-star combo guard Boogie Ellis, who revealed his commitment to Memphis via his Twitter page on Monday night.
The 6-foot-2 Ellis, out of Mission Bay High School in San Diego, announced earlier this month that he had de-committed from Duke, and that development led many recruiting analysts to then peg the Tigers as the favorite to land him. This is a huge get for Hardaway & Co., as Ellis is widely regarded as a top-40 player across the country in the class of 2019.
Other programs thought to possibly have had interest in Ellis, according to a bunch of articles I had read on this extremely talented guy, included Southern California, North Carolina, Kansas, Gonzaga, UCLA, Washington, Vanderbilt and San Diego State.
Per 247Sports, Memphis now possesses six dudes in its 2019 class, which is rated fourth nationally, trailing only Duke, Arizona and Kentucky at this juncture. Unsurprisingly, 247Sports also places the Tigers’ class for this coming term as No. 1 in the American Athletic Conference.
The Memphis class of 2019 features 7-foot-0 center James Wiseman, who is slotted No. 1 overall by the 247Sports Composite, along with Ellis, four-star power forward DJ Jeffries, four-star shooting guard Lester Quinones, four-star center Malcolm Dandridge, and four-star combo guard Damion Baugh.
Quinones just unveiled his decision to suit up for the Tigers a few days ago, on May 10. Another new pick-up for Memphis is graduate transfer Rayjon Tucker, a point guard who most-recently competed for Arkansas Little-Rock, where he averaged 20.3 points and 6.7 rebounds per contest, and before that played at Florida Gulf Coast.
These latest commitments by Ellis, Quinones and Tucker provide a significant boost to Hardaway and his assistants leading into the 2019-20 campaign. The Tigers’ roster is undeniably promising – and certainly young for the better part – and it will prove intriguing to see where media members rank Memphis in the pre-season polls.