It’s hard to ignore the gut feeling, and that feeling is one of the reasons Reed Ducharme, the 2023 four-star recruit, Thursday committed to the Xavier Musketeers.
“It’s hard to describe, but you kind of feel it and you can see yourself in this school more than the others,” said Ducharme, who joined Trey Green as the second member of Xavier’s recruiting class for 2023.
The 6-foot-6 shooting guard from Milton, Massachusetts, Ducharme was ranked No. 97 nationally by 247 sports.
Xavier chose Syracuse and Pennsylvania.
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“The Big East (conference) is huge,” Ducharme said. “There are a lot of things going on with football, conferences and schools moving. There is a lot of security in the Big East.” Basketball is the main attraction.
Besides Big East’s allure, Ducharme said, “Only coach (Sean) Miller. I loved the way he always talked to me on the phone about what he thought could be my potential and what he could help me achieve if I came to Xavier.”
Ducharme already had a relationship with Xavier’s assistant technical director Adam Cohen, who was hiring Ducharme at Stanford before joining Miller’s staff at Xavier.
Ducharme met Miller for the first time on his official visit at the end of June.
“It certainly helped a lot,” Ducharme said. “I wouldn’t say that this was necessarily the moment I knew, but it made it really hard to say no to them.”
On his visit, “The thing I take is Coach Miller is involved. He’s off the field…He helps correct them, if he sees them doing something wrong, he’s going to try to help them, not just yelling at them. But he’ll also be that presence that people respect and people listen to. “I watched a lot of their training. I got to see the skill development aspect of Xavier and that was probably one of the biggest things that got stuck,” Ducharme said.
Ducharme should fit in nicely with the way Miller wants Xavier to play.
“I feel like what most people say about me first is that I am a shooter, and I can shoot really well, but at the same time, I can reach the basket, and reach the midrange as well,” Ducharme said. “I love playing defense. I feel like that’s something people will love about me is that I’m not afraid to get tangled up with someone or play intense defense. This is something that over the last couple of years I take a lot of pride in. I’m a big competitor. I love to win, do whatever it takes. “
If you know anything about Ducharme’s background, it’s probably not surprising that the fact that he’s headed out to play big major college basketball.
Ducharme comes from a family of college athletes. His older sister, Ashley, played at Brown University, and his sister Carolyn is a sophomore at Ocon University. His mother played basketball at Williams College and his father, who played basketball in high school, ran track and played football at Williams.
With a pair of Ducharme and Green’s Top 100 recruits already committed in 2023, Xavier looks ready to add to that and could have another nationally ranked recruiting class when all is said and done.
Green also took an active part in Operation Ducharme.
“It was fantastic,” Ducharme said of Greene. “He called me when he saw that I was thinking very hard about Xavier.”
The fact that Greene was already on board helped Ducharme in his decision.
“It was definitely a huge influence,” he said, “to see what kind of other player Xavier is recruiting and to see that this is the kind of guy who just made a commitment. It is always good to see who you are going to play with and if you get along well with them. It definitely helped you, especially a kid like Trey.”
