Recruiting Spotlight: Jalen Reece
The Top 100 Florida Recruit has a clear top 3 within his top 7
Editor’s Note: All Recruiting Rankings Reflect On3 Composite Rankings as of September 18th
Friartown, I hope your autumn season is off to a wonderful start. I’m taking a brief break in the season preview series (you can read about the backcourt and frontcourt, we will tackle the wings next week) to bring you an update on 2025 priority recruiting target, Jalen Reece.
Reece is an Orlando area native who stands at 6’1 and is currently ranked #65 in the class of 2025. Both Reece and current Providence commit Jamier Jones (#37 in the class of 2025) play for the Florida Rebels AAU Program together on the NIKE EYBL circuit, and there’s been a steady stream of rumors in Friartown that perhaps the AAU teammates want to team up together in college as well. Back in August Reece cut his list of schools down to a final 7, and outlined the 4 official visits (Dayton, Cincinnati, LSU, and Providence) that he was scheduled to take.
Since cutting his list of schools, 3 programs — Providence, Ohio State and Cincinnati - have emerged as the top contenders for Reece’s collegiate services. Reece took an official visit to Cincinnati back in September, and will visit Kim English in Friartown the weekend of October 11th. Reece’s family has significant ties to the Cincinnati area, and his father, Steve Reece, who coaches on the high school and AAU level, has sent several players to Wes Miller’s program. One of Steve Reece’s former players and current Cincinnati Bearcat, Edgerrin James Jr. (yes, his father was the running back for Payton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts teams) is a very close friend of Jalen Reece and its safe to assume the two have at least entertained the idea of playing college ball together.
For what it’s worth, Reece hasn’t yet had an official visit to Ohio State scheduled for this recruiting cycle, but has repeatedly called Ohio State his '“dream school” and is close friends with current Ohio State guard Bruce Thornton from their AAU days. If there was a school outside of this top 3 to land Reece’s services I’d lean towards LSU, where Reece is scheduled to visit this upcoming weekend. Still, count me as pretty shocked if Reece doesn’t end up playing his college ball for either the Bearcats, Buckeyes or Friars.
As for what he brings on the court, Reece is a scrappy point guard who has shot up the class of 2025 rankings over the summer. He profiles, for now, as a pass first point guard who has an advanced handle that allows him to get past his primary defender and into the lane with consistency. When comparing Reece to how current Friars point guard Jayden Pierre profiled as a prospect, Reece is bigger, stronger and can hold up better on the defensive end, while Pierre had an easier time scoring from the perimeter. Both profiled as above average distributors while Reece probably has a slightly better ball handling ability at this time.
I originally thought that Reece was likely to announce his college decision sometime in November, but there’s been an interesting wrinkle in the class of 2025 that may slightly delay that decision.
Only two of the top 10 recruits in the class of 2025 have committed to a school, and only 4 of the top 25 have officially decided where they’re going to play college hoops. It’s a bit late in the cycle to still have this many major dominoes undecided, as this time last year half of the top 10 had already made official commitments. Given the general malaise hanging over the class of 2025 it wouldn’t surprise me to see Reece push a decision back to December, but for now I’ll stick with the original November timeline. I do like Providence’s chances here, but the threat from Cincinnati (and to a lesser extent Ohio State) is a very real one. Three things I’m keeping a particularly close eye on are the timing around Reece’s eventual official visit to Ohio State, whether or not he chooses to visit a particular school for their late night madness celebrations, and how his close friends Edgerrin James Jr (Cincinnati) and Bruce Thornton (Ohio State) fair in the early going of their respective seasons. There’s a hundred inputs that factor into a recruits decision, and they don’t all matter equally, but they do all matter. Obviously, we’ll have a much clearer picture of where things stand after Reece finishes his official visit to Providence on October 11th, and in the meantime Kim English and staff will continue to try to make headway on the recruiting trail with Ben Ahmed, Tee Bartlett and Bryson Tiller.