I suppose it was possible that IBM chose the Boca
Raton project
over some other (unknown to me) 8080-based project due to the
requirement you mention. But I don't think they retargeted their
design from 8080 => 8088.
The IBM System/23 Datamaster was already in production and was based
on the 8085. There are some similarities in the design, suggesting
that the Boca Raton folks were at least partially inspired by it.