Recruiting Spotlight: Jamier Jones

Friars are in Final 6 for the prized class of 2025 recruit

Editor’s Note: All recruiting rankings reflect 247 Composite rankings as of 5/3/25

Hallelujah, the transfer portal is closed. As of 11:59 pm on May 1st, players can no longer enter their name into the transfer portal for the upcoming 2024-25 season. Despite nearly two months of rumors that star Bryce Hopkins would be lured into the portal, Providence has managed to keep all of their prioritized players from last season. For Hopkins specifically, he stonewalled the pursuits of at least 5 programs (Rick Pitino with St John’s, former head coach John Calipari with Arkansas, and Chris Holtmann’s revamped DePaul team amongst them) in what can be read as nothing other than complete faith in Kim English and the Providence Program as a whole. Kim English certainly took exception to the pursuits of various programs trying to poach his star player and called out the unsustainable chaos of college basketball free agency earlier this week in a now viral tweet.

There’s plenty of time for NCAA hand-wringing, and I don’t anticipate this free agency model will be around for long given the current state of several court cases that the NCAA is facing. But if we’re being honest, this year’s transfer portal was pretty good to Kim English’s squad. At a minimum he locked in a veteran point guard with Final 4 experience in Bensley Joseph, a developmental big with untold upside in Christ Essandoko and a multi-dimensional wing who gives me shades of Justin Minaya in Georgia’s Jabri Abdur-Rahim. Not all bad! There’s no doubt Providence upgraded both the experience, and more importantly the talent from last season’s roster via this year’s transfer portal. Measured by offensive value ranking (essentially a measurement of a player’s scoring + playmaking) and minute played, there’s only a handful of teams in the country that have faired better than Providence this offseason.

Barring something truly unforeseen, Providence heads into the real offseason with 11 scholarship players, one Wesley Cardet-sized pending NBA draft decision and one open scholarship that could very well be taken up by a reclassification from 2025 commit Oswin Erhunmwunse once his spring AAU season concludes in late June.

With that, we can mercifully end the portal talk (for now) and turn our attention to high school recruiting. Today we’ll focus on Jamier Jones, the #22 recruit in the class of 2025 out of Orlando, Florida who just announced his final 6 schools (Providence, LSU, South Carolina, Houston, Kansas and Ohio State). Jones has been refreshingly candid throughout his recruitment in terms of what he’s looking for in a school and how he’s prioritizing each program ahead of his May 12th committment date. Jones has already taken an official visit to Providence back in November, and will visit again the weekend of May 9th which, if we’re being honest, sets the Friars up in pole position to land their highest rated recruit since Kris Dunn.

Jones made a few interesting comments last week at an AAU tournament in Memphis, telling Rob Cassidy of Rivals.com “I’m committing on May 12th no matter what, so if I don’t take a visit [to a school] before May 12, then, you know…” Jones has previously visited both LSU and South Carolina in addition to Providence, and the way his recruitment is shaping up I’d be shocked if he went anywhere besides those 3 schools. The kid is literally telling us that he isn’t going to commit to a school he hasn’t visited. So if it really is Providence vs. South Carolina vs. LSU (it is), let’s take a look at what each school offers and where Jones may end up.