​Way back a while, we saw a COMMITTED Instagram post from French basketball player Ainoah Rio, announcing that she would be playing for Marquette women’s basketball in the future. I have to say “in the future” because nowhere in the commitment announcement was a definitive statement that she would be joining Cara Consuegra’s Golden Eagles for the 2026-27 season. It certainly looked that way because 1) Rio turned 20 years old in May and 2) it was right in line, timing-wise, with other new enrollment/transfer commitments.But there was no confirmation of that being the case. And then weeks went by and Marquette never officially announced Rio’s signing. And then Rio’s French league team won the second division title and Marquette was reposting all of those celebration posts on Instagram…. but not announcing her signing. And then I got no comment’d by Marquette when I asked nicely for a confirmation as to what recruiting class she was supposed to be in just so I didn’t have to spend blog post after blog post saying “hey, what’s going on with this, it’s still not clear.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnyway, it turns out that hitting the follow button on Ainoah Rio’s Instagram on the off chance that she would post something like “leaving for the US today!” or whatever paid off on Tuesday when her agency made a big ol’ post about all the players that they helped land on NCAA Division 1 teams and Rio reposted it to her Stories.Conveniently, there’s a gigantic “2026/2027” right there in the middle of the graphic, so there you go: Confirmation from Ainoah Rio’s agency (and secondarily from Rio herself since she reposted it) that Ainoah Rio is joining Cara Consuegra’s roster sometime between now and the start of the school year in about five weeks. There is a teeny bit of “hey, wait a minute” here, as Augment is labeling all of these players as SIGNED but the fact that I’m posting this lets you know that Marquette still hasn’t made an official press release announcement about Rio signing.why can’t we have nice thingsAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLet’s drop in the scholarship chart, and then we’ll talk about the mystery that we still have left in front of us.We still don’t know for sure how Ainoah Rio fits in to Marquette’s roster relative to the new five years/age based eligibility rules that the NCAA passed earlier this summer. Rio just turned 20 in May, so I feel very comfortable to say that she will not have all five years of eligibility when she arrives in Milwaukee. Since the age based rules surround your 19th birthday, I think this means that Rio will come in with four years of eligibility remaining, which is why I’ve tinted her 2026-27 spot green. I’m leaving the question mark in there for now because again, until Marquette officially says she’s signed and officially says how many seasons she has to play, we’re 100% over in guesswork land here.But at least we solved