LSU Basketball Lands Highly Touted 2023 Combo Guard Marvel Allen

Will Wade and LSU basketball have done it again. Over the weekend, the Tigers added another significant piece to its future, landing a commitment from 2023 point guard Marvel Allen.

The 6-foot-4 combo guard out of Fort Lauderdale, Allen has been one of the more naturally gifted scorers in the country at Calvary Christian Academy for the past two seasons since transferring in 2020.

Earlier this week, Allen narrowed his focus down to eight teams, including the Tigers, Alabama and Georgia in the SEC. Ultimately Wade and the purple and gold won out, giving the Tigers another anchor to its roster moving forward.

"I’m big on relationships and I want to be in the best situation possible," Allen told SI All-American this week when he narrowed his focus to eight teams.

Already having a sturdy college frame, it'll be interesting to see if Allen is the next in line of high schoolers who graduate as juniors and enroll in college a year early. LSU has some recent history with that as Justice Williams re-classified to the 2021 class after initially being a 2022 recruit.

"I'm big on relationships," Allen told ESPN. “Their playing style, I love playing defense and coach Wade let's his guards ball out, so I felt like it was the best opportunity.

"Coach Wade is a great coach. He flew down to my game and surprised me and I was shocked. He called me every day and talked to me outside the game of basketball, and he's going to help me become a man. I'm all about structure and I feel like Will Wade can provide that for me."

The future of this roster looks mighty promising with Adam Miller set to return next season as well as potentially Williams, Eric Gaines, Brandon Murray, Alex Fudge, Mwani Wilkinson and even Efton Reid. The Tigers will also welcome highly skilled forwards Julian Phillips and Devin Ree as well.

A three level scorer with a technically sound jump shot in this stage of his career, all it takes is a few minutes of watching Allen's film to realize the potential he could have in Wade's offense. While 2021 has been an outlier for the Tigers during Wade's tenure, this is a program that has consistently been in the top 15 or so offenses in the country from a pure statistics point of view.

What LSU also has going for it is that it's sent a number of guards including Tremont Waters, Skylar Mays and most recently Cam Thomas to the NBA, all of whom are currently on rosters.