Syracuse basketball target, prolific 4-star guard, makes big rankings debut

Last month, Syracuse basketball made its first scholarship offer in the 2025 class, as least as far as I can tell.

That offer went out to prolific-scoring guard Jerry Easter II from Ohio, according to recruiting services, who earned a ton of high praise this spring and summer for his performances in grassroots basketball.

While the majority of recruiting Web sites have yet to publish national rankings for the 2025 cycle, the top-notch analysts and scouts with The Circuit recently published their ratings of the top-50 prospects in the rising-sophomore class.

Easter made his debut via these rankings from The Circuit at four stars and No. 33 across the country. I could envision his national ratings climbing even higher than that in the future.

Syracuse basketball recently entered the recruitment of four-star guard Jerry Easter II.

In earlier parts of the recent AAU circuit, Easter suited up for the Detroit-based Super Friendz in the Adidas league.

However, at the recently held Peach Jam tournament in North Augusta, S.C., on Nike’s EYBL circuit, Easter appears to have competed for the New Jersey Scholars Elite Basketball Club.

I’ve come across a handful of posts on social media from analysts and scouts who lauded Easter for his play at Peach Jam, which occurred amid an NCAA live period where college coaches and others could watch high-school players in person.

Despite college coaches not being able to communicate directly with 2025 prospects, for the time being, Easter has already amassed around 20 scholarship offers from a range of high-major programs.

Besides Syracuse basketball, recruiting heavyweight Memphis recently offered him. Easter’s other offers include 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.

The 6-foot-4 Easter, described by recruiting services as either a point guard or a shooting guard, is a rising sophomore at the Emmanuel Christian School in Toledo, Ohio.

As a freshman for the Emmanuel Christian School in 2021-22, Easter unfortunately missed several games due to an injury. But he still ended up tallying averages of 25 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists per contest in 2021-22, according to MaxPreps.

This past April, despite an abbreviated freshman stanza, Easter was named to the MaxPreps freshman All-America first team for the 2021-22 stanza.

It’s encouraging that the Orange has offered this talented young man early on in his recruiting process, but the competition for Easter is only going to widen moving forward.

As the offers keep rolling in, I imagine that Easter will ultimately get ranked as five stars and in the top-20 nationally within the 2025 class when all is said and done.