Maryland basketball wants elite 2017 power forward Ira Lee

The Maryland men’s basketball team offered a scholarship over the weekend to Ira Lee, a power forward and consensus four-star prospect in the class of 2017. Lee announced Maryland’s offer on Twitter in a casual and nonchalant way:

Lee is a pretty heavy Arizona lean on the 247Sports Crystal Ball, and he’s drawn interest from a lot of top programs. He’ll be a tough catch, but he’s apparently one worth the work. He hails from San Pedro, Calif.

Some helpful backstory from Inside Maryland Sports’ Josh Stirn, who knows this stuff:

Lee first emerged on Maryland’s radar two years ago; at the time, Lee was teammates with another four-star forward Cody Riley, who visited N.C. State when current director of basketball operations Nima Omidvar was on staff there. Mark Turgeon ended up monitoring both Riley and Lee once Omidvar came to College Park, but the interest never seemed to intensify between the two parties.

"But, do we have highlights?" you ask? We do!

Other things from the weekend

Maryland gets JuCo corner J.C. Jackson, according to a report from 247Sports’ Ryan Bartow. This is a big thing.

Maryland doesn’t get five-star defensive end Chase Young, who committed to Ohio State. But the Terps have a shot at his star offensive line teammate, Marcus Minor.

Mark Turgeon and Maryland signee Kevin Huerter won the FIBA under-18 Americas title. Huerter averaged 6.8 points in five games and made some threes.

Some basketball schedulin’:

Cool news for former Maryland goalkeeper Zack Steffen:

We wrote a lot of Profiles in Terpage. Catch up here.

Enjoy your Monday, everyone.