Syracuse Basketball: Orange enters fray for explosive, All-American guard

College coaches aren’t permitted to reach out to high-school prospects in the 2025 class, but that hasn’t stopped prolific guard Jerry Easter II out of Ohio from landing more than 15 offers early on in his recruitment, with one of the latest such scholarship offers reportedly arriving from Syracuse basketball.

According to Verbal Commits, the Orange coaching staff has offered the 6-foot-4, 190-pound Easter, who is a rising sophomore at the Emmanuel Christian School in Toledo, Ohio.

As far as I can tell, this is the first offer that the ‘Cuse has made to a player in the 2025 cycle.

Syracuse basketball certainly seems to have started out its offer list in the 2025 class in style, because Easter appears to be one of the top prospects around the country in the rising-sophomore cycle.

Syracuse basketball has gotten into the mix for top-flight guard Jerry Easter II.

This past April, MaxPreps named Easter to its freshman All-America first team for the 2021-22 campaign. MaxPreps says that the new Orange recruiting target averaged a stellar 25 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists per contest in his freshman season for the Emmanuel Christian Academy.

College coaches can’t begin initiating direct communication with 2025 players until June 15 after their sophomore years, but that hasn’t prevented Easter from picking up numerous impressive offers.

In looking at his bio on various recruiting Web sites, besides the ‘Cuse, Easter holds offers from teams such as Michigan State, Ohio State, Mike Hopkins-led Washington, UCLA, Cincinnati, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Arizona State, Missouri, New Mexico State, Bowling Green, Morgan State, Northern Illinois, Oakland, Toledo and Cleveland State.

I’m seeing Easter described as either a point guard or a shooting guard by recruiting services. He has been playing on the AAU circuit with Super Friendz in the Adidas league.

"In an article from mid-June, 247Sports national basketball director Eric Bossi wrote in part, “Already established as one of the top perimeter players in the class of 2025, Jerry Easter is an explosive wing scorer. He shoots with range, is athletic when attacking the rim and plays with an alpha mentality that allows him to thrive as a scorer.”"

It’s nice to see that Syracuse basketball coaches have offered him early on in his recruiting process, but obviously, a ton more offers will likely head Easter’s way.

Down the line, when recruiting services unveil their first rounds of 2025 national rankings, I’d imagine that Easter will be placed as a five-star, top-20 overall player in his class. We’ll continue to track his recruitment moving forward.