Penn State basketball loses out on 2025 three-star basketball recruit to Big Ten foe

Last week, Penn State basketball head coach Mike Rhoades and his staff landed the highest-rated recruit in Penn State history. Kayden Mingo, a top 50 recruit in the 2025 class, seemingly rounded out Rhoades’s second recruiting class as head coach of the Nittany Lions. However, this could have changed on Wednesday morning.

Penn State was in the final six schools for three-star center recruit Cade Bennerman earlier this week. Bennerman is a 6-foot-11, 195-pound big man out of Nashville, Tennessee. He is currently ranked inside the top 200 recruits overall, as the 35th center, and he is the highest-ranked prospect out of Tennessee in 247sports’s composite rankings.

Bennerman cut down his list to Northwestern, Michigan, and South Florida before announcing his commitment on Wednesday morning. 

After ultimately deciding on Northwestern, he told 247sports, “I like the way they let their forwards and bigs handle the ball and play to their strengths.” That has been the philosophy for Northwestern basketball under head coach Chris Collins, so the reasoning on that aspect is very understandable.

Ultimately, Bennerman did not seem to be heavily considering Penn State. His only two official visits were to Northwestern and South Florida. Northwestern seemed like the right choice for Bennerman, as Chris Collins is a fantastic head coach who has consistently produced great college players and has overachieved with the program during his time in Evanston. 

Penn State has a fantastic 2025 basketball recruiting class so far under Rhoades. It consists of 6-foot-2 point guard Kayden Mingo, ranked 43rd nationally, 6-foot-7 small forward Masom Blackwood, ranked 102nd nationally, and 6-foot-11 center Justin Houser, ranked 221st nationally.  

Even without landing Bennerman, the Nittany Lion's three recruits in 2025 have the program as the 13th-ranked class. Not every prospect has committed yet, obviously, but being in the top 15 at this point in the recruiting cycle is exceptional. It goes to show what a brilliant job Rhoades and his staff, including associate head coach Jamal Brunt, have done in the past two years to transform and revolutionize Penn State’s basketball program into something special.