The start of Penn State’s men’s basketball season tips off next week, but head coach Mike Rhoades has already scored perhaps his biggest win of the year. On Friday, Penn State received a verbal commitment from [autotag]Kayden Mingo[/autotag], one of the nation’s top-50 basketball recruits in the Class of 2025. Mingo is the highest-ranked player to ever commit to Penn State in program history, making this one of the biggest recruiting victories for Rhoades since taking over the head coaching job in State College.
Mingo is a combination center and guard from Glen Head, New York. Mingo is a consensus four-star recruit according to the recruiting outlets, and he is rated as the second-overall player in New York according to 247Sports and On3. He is a consensus top-10 center-guard combo as well.
Mingo is ranked as the no. 43 player overall in the Class of 2025 by 247Sports. Prior to the commitment of Mingo, the highest-ranked recruit for Penn State using the same player rankings mechanic was Tony Carr in the Class of 2016 (no. 84 overall). The third highest rated recruit for Penn State will be a future teammate of Mingo, Miles Goodman. Goodman was a four-star center in Penn State’s Class of 2024 and is entering his freshman season with the Nittany Lions.
The addition of Mingo’s commitment has skyrocketed Penn State’s basketball recruiting class all the way up to no. 12 in the nation, which is good for the third-best in the Big Ten at the time of this writing. Penn State currently ranks one spot higher than Kentucky, five spots ahead of Alabama, and nine spots ahead of Michigan State. Time will tell just how long Penn State can hold on to this rare high basketball recruiting ranking, but Rhoades is clearly putting in the work to transform Penn State from a program capable of making an appearance in the NCAA basketball tournament once a decade to realistically expecting annual trips to the Big Dance being the expectation rather than the exception.