Recruiting Spotlight: Oswin Erhunmwunse

Friars land in the Final 4 of top 25 big man

News broke last week that class of 2025 6’9 big man Oswin Erhunmwunse was down to his final 4 schools. Erhunmwunse plays his high school ball at Putnam Science Academy in Putnam, Connecticut and is currently rated as the number 24 overall recruit in the class of 2025, and the number 2 center prospect.

What makes his recruitment particular interesting is that Oswin has long been speculated as a prime candidate to reclassify to the class of 2024. While this is technically a Final 4 list of schools, a number of sources have indicated that this is essentially a two way race between Providence and Oklahoma, with NIL likely to play a significant factor in where the coveted recruit ends up.

News flash to all of Friartown, the University of Oklahoma has a deeper NIL wallet than Providence College. However, I don’t think this means that we’re necessarily shit outta luck. Oswin has previously stated he’s aiming to make a committment decision by the middle of January, so there’s roughly another week or two left in this recruitment. I have been led to believe that at this point (Friday, January 5th at 2:30 pm EST) Oswin has not decided either way between Providence and Oklahoma.

The way I see it, there’s a few factors here that fundamentally favor the Friars, but there are also some meaningful disadvantages that cannot be ignored.

In Favor of Friartown:

1. Oklahoma is a football school, always has been, always will be.

   Oswin was actually on his official visit to Oklahoma when they drilled Providence by 20 back in December. Certainly not a great showing for the Friars but the atmosphere in the building that night, for OU’s biggest game of the non conference calendar, was akin to a Providence vs. Name Your Ivy League School game in early November. The atmosphere’s are just worlds apart. Basketball will always be a distant second to football at the University of Oklahoma, while basketball is seemingly more important than politics, religion and all other sports combined at Providence College.

2. Erhunmwunse plays his high school basketball 1,636 miles from Norman, Oklahoma and just 29.3 miles from Providence, Rhode Island

   My intel indicates that he really did enjoy his time out at OU, but Oswin has been spotted behind the Friars bench several times this season (granted, one of those was for the Seton Hall game but I digress). Oswin originally hails from Nigeria so perhaps he couldn’t care less about a few extra thousand miles, but if it comes down to comfort and a familiar environment, Friartown has a clear edge.

3. Oklahoma head coach Porter Moser is a great coach, but has 0 NBA experience neither playing nor coaching

   For me this is the biggest differentiator in favor of the Friars. To be crystal clear, the goal for all these top 30-ish recruits is to play in the NBA. Most of them don’t honestly give a shit where they spend a year (or 2 at most) playing college ball, and that is especially true now in the era of Name Image Likeness. Not every recruit (or their handlers / influencers / parents / etc.) has the ‘let me go to the highest bidder until I get drafted’ mindset, but more than a few of them do. While Providence can’t offer the highest bid, Kim English has first hand (and recent!) knowledge of what it takes to crack it in the league. This is a recruiting advantage that Providence has over 95% of college schools and must be leveraged at every possible opportunity.

4. God owes us one after Bryce Hopkins went down for the season

   Kidding, kinda.

Against Providence: