Mason Brings in a Local 2025 Guard on an Official Visit

Your George Mason Patriots and Tony Skinn are bringing in local 2025 guard Omari Witherspoon for an official visit on June 23rd and 24th.

Big one here‼️ @mar1Witherspoon https://t.co/WXFpfapXIl

— George Mason Recruiting (@GMURecruiting) June 13, 2024

As mentioned in the above tweet, this will be his first official visit.

Witherspoon, is a 6’4 combo guard attending St. John’s College High School, and is from the same area, Bowie, Maryland, as Darius Maddox, who also spent some time at St. John’s.

Omari took a visit to Mason last August, but it was unofficial. The 6’4 guard has offers from Mason, Stony Brook, NJIT, Nicholls State, Loyola Maryland, Towson, American, Norfolk State, Morehead State, George Washington, Richmond, Murray State, Rhode Island, Old Dominion, and Butler. Witherspoon has taken unofficial visits to Maryland, ODU, Penn State, American, UVA, and George Washington. He also reportedly has interest from some ACC schools, including, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, and of course, UVA.

Based on those offers and visits, it seems teams believe Mason’s official visitor is somewhere between a high-level mid-major guy and a Power 5 one.

Per SJCBoysHoops on Twitter, his high school’s basketball account, Witherspoon made 1^st Team All-WCAC and All-DSCAA, both signifying he was one of the best players in the DMV area. Per PrepHoopsMD, Omari is the #7 2025 player in the state of Maryland. Those are some good accolades to have.

About his game, the combo guard finishes well at the rim in traffic, is able to take advantage of bigs getting switched onto him, and hits threes from college, if not NBA range. He also has a nice pull-up game. Omari’s shot looks like a cross between Tyrese Haliburton’s if his shot was fixed when he was 13, and Woody Newton’s. Witherspoon can punish teams if they go under screens.

The 6’4 guard has a nice bag, as he can confidently get open and shoot on step-backs. I see why he’s listed as a combo guard everywhere; Omari will likely be a secondary ball-handler with the potential to play point one day.

On the other end, I watched the first couple of minutes of his game against Jackson-Reed to get a feel for his defense.

Witherspoon is active in passing lanes, and is able to turn defense into offense. He’s good at covering off-ball. While Omari wasn’t denying his guy the ball, he wasn’t letting him get enough separation to be able to do something once his man got it.

The 6’4 guard got switched onto a very small ball-handler and mirrored his movement well, causing him to pass the ball out.

On one occasion, Witherspoon was put in a situation where he was between the ball-handler and the rim on a fast break, and didn’t do too well. You can’t really ask a 6’4 guard to play the role of one-on-one rim defender and expect it to go well. In the half court though, he helped over a couple of times and it went much better.

It seems like Omari was the leader of the defender, as I saw him pointing a lot. Good defenses are vocal.

Altogether, I see why ACC and other Power 5 schools are interested in him, especially UVA.

If the combo guard were to come to Mason, he would probably play the two early on, as Jared Billups would be gone, and Brayden O’Connor and Bryson Cokley, who is more of a wing, would be the only two guys he would be competing for minutes with, disregarding any possible incoming transfers.