Sheek Pearson Is In The Transfer Portal
With just hours to go before the portal entry period closes, Marquette suddenly doesn’t have their redshirt freshman big.
so long, dude | Credit: Marquette University When word got out in mid-February that Marquette men’s basketball head coach Shaka Smart was going to evolve his roster through the use of the transfer portal, there was one looming thought in my mind: When you open a door to bring something in, sometimes things you don’t want to leave manage to slip out. And so, with the men’s basketball transfer portal set to close on Tuesday night, thus ending the ability for anyone to declare and still be eligible to play next season, we get this report from ESPN’s Jeff Borzello: Redshirt freshman Sheek Pearson is in the portal. Marquette big man Sheek Pearson has entered the transfer portal, source told ESPN.
Former top-50 recruit reclassified into the 2025 class and redshirted this past season with the Golden Eagles. — Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) April 22, 2026 Pearson committed to Marquette in May 2025 as a Class of 2026 prospect. At the time, he was ranked #63 in the country in the 247 Sports Composite rankings and #66 in ESPN’s top 100.
By the end of July, plans for Pearson had changed , and he was enrolling immediately, reclassifying to 2025 and redshirting for the 2025-26 season to get physically ready — MU lists him at 6’11” but just 205 pounds — in a Division 1 weight room. That changed the dynamics of his recruiting rankings a little bit, but the 247 Composite still had him at #71 when it locked into place . The thought process upon the commitment of Sananda Fru — who was officially announced by Marquette on Tuesday afternoon along with Nolan Minessale — was that Fru’s one year on the MU roster would allow Pearson a little bit of cover to launch himself into the rotation.
Fru plays as much as he wants/can as the starting center, Pearson picks up the balance of the time, Josh Clark and Caedin Hamilton do a heck of a job clapping and waving a towel on the sideline, and then in 2027-28, Pearson elevates to the starting job for the remainder of his time in Milwaukee. That plan is now out the door, although having Fru in place already does make things a little bit easier to deal with in the immediate tense. Before we dig deeper here, let’s go to the scholarship chart.