Who's next for Providence in the Class of 2025?

Jalen Reece, Tee Bartlett and a few more names are on the radar

Editor’s Note: All Recruiting Rankings Reflect On3 Composite Rankings as of July 31

The dog days of summer, and of the college basketball offseason are officially here. With the season less than 100 days away, and the maximum amount of scholarship players on the roster accounted for, we know exactly who will be suiting up for the 2024-25 Friars. It’s a roster that has significantly more depth and size than last season, and the expectations from the fans (this one especially) will reflect that new reality. There are some unknowns for sure - namely how quickly does Bryce Hopkins discover his pre-injury form and how does Kim English manage minutes and keep the roster buy-in / chemistry in a harmonious place - but again, we have nearly 3 months to have those conversations.

Today I wanted to take a look at who some of the names of Providence’s radar for the class of 2025 are, and when we might expect to see some commitments from these guys. With Jamier Jones and Jaylen Harrell already in the fold for next season, Providence has an extremely strong foundation to their 2025 recruiting class. However, the other side of that coin is that this will be the final season in Friartown for Bryce Hopkins, Wesley Cardet Jr, Bensley Joseph, and Jabri Abdur-Rahim, not to mention any of the non-seniors who depart after the season. I expect those 4 to be amongst the leaders on this year’s team in minuets played, so regardless of if anyone else decides to leave after his season, English will have to replace a significant amount of production. Of course he’ll leverage the transfer portal to bring in reinforcements, but I’d still expect the Friars to sign one, perhaps two, more high schoolers from the class of 2025. Here’s 5 names to keep an eye on.

Ben Ahmed

6’10, 225 pounds; 78th in Class of 2025

Ahmed reclassified last week from 2026 to the class of 2025, further fueling speculation that his commitment timeline is a bit ahead of the other names on this list. Ahmed plays his high school hoops at Putnam Science Academy in Putnam, CT, which just so happens to be the school that recent commit Oswin Erhunmwunse played at. Oswin chimed in on his personal Instagram page when news of Ahmed’s jump up to the class of 2025 broke.

Ahmed is much more of a traditional, back to the basket big man than his former PSA teammate, a Nate Watson-type of post player where if you can get the ball to him on the block, you expect something good to come out of the possession. Ahmed will need to continue to improve his conditioning and add more post moves to his repertoire to be able to dominate at the D1 level where he won’t simply be bigger and stronger than 95% of his opponents, but there’s plenty of time for that. In addition to Providence, the big man currently holds offers from Rhode Island, Rutgers, Georgetown, Xavier and Iowa but I’d expect his recruitment to heat up significantly now that he’s officially a part of the class of 2025.

I would be very surprised if Providence didn’t eventually end up with either Ahmed or the other big man on this list.

Jalen Reece

6’0, 175 pounds; 99th in Class of 2025

Every time I watch Reece play he reminds me more and more or Luwane Pipkins. And no, it’s not because he’s an undersized guard that plays bigger than he measures, it’s because he’s a fearless dog who competes through the whistle on every possession.

Similar to Ahmed, Reece has a connection to the Program in the form of AAU teammate Jamier Jones. Both Jones and Reece 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. There was also this quote from Jaylen Harrell who mentioned that both him and Jones are going to try and get Reece to commit to Friartown this Fall (1:30 mark in the below clip).

Sometimes recruiting is an opaque world, but sometimes it isn’t! Reece currently holds more than 15 D1 offers and it appears that some combination of LSU, Ohio State and Cincinnati are in the lead for his services. This afternoon, Reece cut his list of schools down to a top 7 (don’t tell me I don’t bring y’all the latest news!) and Providence is still squarely in the mix. Although, it doesn’t seem to me that the Friars are necessarily a favorite here, Kim English and Co. are certainly contenders. To be fair many folks questioned how real all the smoke was with Reece’s teammate Jamier Jones, and we all know how that turned out.

Reece has an official visits to LSU and Penn State scheduled this September, but I’d expect him to add one or two more to his calendar before making a decision sometime prior to the high school season getting underway in November.