Iowa State Basketball will have 4-star center JT Rock for 2023-24 season
Iowa State Basketball already had four-star big man JT Rock committed to the program but after a recent decision, looks to be joining them a bit early.
Looking at the overall 2023 recruiting classes and how they’re ranked, you have the usual suspects in Duke and Kentucky ranked at the top but not too far behind them in the top 10 in Iowa State Basketball, who brought in a very impressive haul. It was a four-man class at first, led by five-star forward prospect, Omaha Biliew.
Yet that group has officially landed another member in JT Rock, a top-100 overall prospect. The center from South Dakota has already been a Cyclone commit in the 2024 class, which already had three members. However, he reportedly decided to reclass in order to join the team for the upcoming season.
On the surface, it’s an interesting decision for Rock to make. The team’s frontcourt already has a trio of 5th-year bigs on the roster in Robert Jones, Hason Ward, and Tre King. All of them came off the bench last season but did have nine starts combined and provided plenty of experience overall.
Yet it seems as if Rock is willing to take a redshirt next season and effectively sit out, developing off the court before being ready to take over in the 2024-25 campaign, which likely won’t include Biliew. It’s a risk on his part because he won’t be on the court to prove that the Cyclones shouldn’t try to over-recruit him in the following offseason. On the other hand, wasting a year of eligibility playing little-to-no minutes in an already crowded backcourt isn’t ideal either.
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Either way, Iowa State Basketball’s roster is set for next season with all 13 players and there’s definitely depth both inside and out. We probably won’t hear much from Rock this upcoming campaign but keep an eye out for him being a future piece for the roster in the frontcourt once the others are gone.