NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 7 teams for 4-star forward Matthew Gilhool

Mississippi State Bulldogs

With star big man Tolu Smith gone, the frontcourt for the program will be very young, including incoming freshmen, Eric Paymon Jr. and and Chol Machot. It’s unknown right now which of the young underclassmen core will breakout so Gilhool could either have a good chance at early minutes or deal with a future logjam. This is a scenario where he’d have to wait to see how the new frontcourt would look before knowing his possible role.

Tennessee Volunteers

The Vols already have a big man in the 2025 class in four-star center prospect, Dewayne Brown II, who adds to the frontcourt depth. Even with transfer Igor Milcic Jr. only around for one year, it’ll come down to what kind of impact sophomores JP Estrella and Cade Phillips has to determine what kind of future role Gilhool would have with the team. His spacing ability and shooting would be nice for the program to pair with Brown and Felix Okpara long-term.

Utah Utes

As the Utes move to the Big 12, they’re going to need all the top-100 talent in the world to be competitive. They did add a few transfer forwards such as Zach Keller and Keanu Dawes and it’s unknown how good they’ll be at this level. The team also has four-star commit Jaxson Johnson and could pair him with Gilhool to have an offense with plenty of spacing in the future.

Of the six options, all of them does have potential logjam concerns to deal with but the most consistent programs are Tennessee and Mississippi State. Could the SEC end up being Gilhool’s destination? We’ll see soon enough.