Class Of 2025 Prospect Mason Blackwood Gets An Offer From Marquette

Spring has sprung across North America, and for us humble college basketball bloggers, that means recruiting news. Marquette head coach Shaka Smart has done us a solid by giving us a new scholarship offer to talk about. In this case, it’s Class of 2025 wing Mason Blackwood.

247 Sports lists Blackwood as a 6’5”, 175 pound shooting guard in the Class of 2025. He attends New Hampton School in New Hampton, New Hampshire, which is right about in the middle of the state. No ratings or rankings for Blackwood yet, but 247 only goes out to a top 75 for their national rankings right now, so that’s not terribly surprising. We’re talking about the guys who are sophomores in high school right now, so you can understand how everyone’s been focused on making sure they properly evaluate juniors and seniors.

For what it’s worth to you, On3 lists Blackwood at 6’7” and 210 pounds, which is more in line with Blackwood’s own listing of his height in his Twitter bio. They also say he’s a four-star prospect and they rank him at #70 in the country in their internal setup.

According to Blackwood’s tweets, Marquette is only his fourth scholarship offer, and his first high major offer. Siena was first, and they were followed by Albany and Buffalo. Those offers were all back in spring and summer of 2022.... but also it’s worth noting that Blackwood used to be a Class of 2024 prospect back when he was at Aquinas Institute in Rochester, New York. We’ll see what happens to his recruiting pathways now that he appears to officially be in the Class of 2025 and perhaps a little bit bigger than he was a year ago.

New Hampton School is part of NEPSAC, the New England regional prep school athletic conference, which means that we can peek at New England Recruiting Report to learn a little about him. From February 2023:

The 2025 duo of Mason Blackwood and Keyshuan Tillery has quickly burst onto the scene. Blackwood’s size, strength, and mid-range touch make him a difficult cover.

Seems good, although we’ll have to wait and see about that mid-range touch stuff relative to the offensive system that Nevada Smith and Shaka Smart are employing at Marquette.

How about some highlights, courtesy of New Hampton Basketball? I’m going to embed the longest one that they have available from the 2022-23 season here, but if you wander over to their YouTube page there are NINE videos.

Scholarship chart time!

At a glance, it would certainly seem like a 6’7” 210-ish pound wing like Blackwood would work as a David Joplin replacement relative to the departing senior class for the 2024-25 season. If nothing else, that’s how Blackwood might fit in when it comes down to it. Of course, with three open scholarship spots for 2024-25, it’s hard to say for certain exactly what direction the Golden Eagles could be going by then, especially if those scholarship spots get held for Oso Ighodaro, Tyler Kolek, and Olivier-Maxence Prosper. All we know for sure is that it’s a long time between now and summer of 2025 when Blackwood could possibly be enrolling at whatever college he chooses.