Memphis Basketball: Five-star Precious Achiuwa commits to play for Tigers

Precious Achiuwa took his time with his recruitment, but he has made his decision. He announced he will be playing for Memphis Basketball next season.

Penny Hardaway has gotten this Memphis Basketball program back on track and he has brought in a dominant recruiting class. The rich get richer as the addition of Precious Achiuwa to their 2019 class now gives them the top-ranked class in the nation according to 247sports.

This is a dominant recruiting class for the Memphis Tigers which includes seven incoming high school recruits, as well as a stud graduate transfer guard in Rayjon Tucker. The incoming recruits are all highly ranked headlined by the top recruit in the nation James Wiseman. Other recruits such as Boogie Ellis and Lester Quinones are also both expected to play huge roles as they could potentially form the starting backcourt next season.

This is a basketball team that is undergoing big changes to their roster as they lost almost everybody from a year ago. They do bring in more talented players, but anytime you go through a roster overhaul such as this one it can be tough. It will be interesting to see how Penny Hardaway can make this work.

They do have a couple of returning players such as Tyler Harris and Alex Lomax, but after the new acquisitions, the Tigers made those two likely will have lesser roles. It’s going to be tough to make every player happy with their role, but being able to compete at a high level is worth it. If all these players are willing to sacrifice for team success then this is a squad that can make a Final Four type run, they’re that talented.

This should be the final piece to the puzzle for the Tigers. They have good depth in both the backcourt and the frontcourt and they have all the talent needed to compete at a high level. RJ Hampton is still available and Memphis is a potential landing spot, but it just feels unlikely that he would still go to Memphis.

The Tigers have been the favorites for Achiuwa for a while now, but it’s still disappointing for the other programs that missed out on him. Kansas and UNC had picked up some steam in recent days, but now they’ll have to settle with players already on their roster. The Jayhawks are still awaiting the news of Silvio De Sousa‘s appeal so they could still bring back another dominant big to pair with Udoka Azubuike.

The Memphis Tigers haven’t had expectations like this in a long time. They had some great teams when John Calipari was the head coach and now they have a chance to do the same. Adding Precious Achiuwa to the mix gives them a stud power forward to use, but his versatility also gives him a chance to play some at small forward if they want to play a guy like DJ Jeffries extra minutes.

All the talent is here for them to be successful. If they can put it together well then this team is going to be one of the best squads in the country, if not they could really struggle. It could take some time to gel this team together, but with the amount of talent they have, they will be fun to watch no matter what.