Being from Minnesota, Chase Thompson arrived for his first visit to Clemson a little apprehensive.

Not because of anything specific regarding Brad Brownell’s program, but because of how far away it was from home. However, shortly after arriving on campus, that skepticism turned into admiration. It didn’t take long for the 4-star prospect to decide it was the perfect fit and on Sunday he went public with his commitment to the Tigers.

“When I first kind of got there I was a little little skeptical, a little out of my comfort zone,” Thompson told The Clemson Insider. “As the visit went on, just a lot of the little things added up. The staff kind of went all out for my visit, which didn’t go unnoticed at all. Then as I was leaving, I was just like, ‘I gotta be back here.’ I took a couple days to kind of let that post-visit excitement kind of wear off and then about Wednesday-ish, I woke up and I was like, yeah, it’s Clemson for sure.”

In fact, the longer he stayed on campus, everything about Clemson began to remind him of his own hometown.

“I fell in love with the campus,” Thompson said. “My hometown of Alexandria, it’s about 17-20,000 people and Clemson reminded me of it a lot. Just here in Alexandria, everybody’s for the school and has something to do with the school. When I was at Clemson, I felt that that culture of everybody’s about the school. There’s a lot of students but when they get 85,000 people in a football game, and they’re telling me that all their season ticket holders already sold out for the basketball games, everything like that, it just it sparked a lot of interest.”

“I’m all in. Brownell talks about that a lot, and I’m ready to buy in. I’m a hard worker for sure.”

Thompson is also the quarterback of his high school football team. He’s actually the top quarterback prospect in the state of Minnesota. At one time, early in his recruitment, he thought there might be a possibility he could play football at the collegiate level.

Several schools were showing interest in him as a quarterback, including some Power-4 programs. However, after an an extremely strong summer on the hardwood, it became readily apparent that his future was in basketball.

“Last fall, I was telling colleges that I was 50/50, which I really wasn’t,” Thompson said. “I was a basketball player growing up. Still a basketball guy. But I got looks from Minnesota, Iowa State, und North Dakota State, a lot of Midwest D-1’s. I went on a couple game day visits. I actually went on a game day visit to Iowa State. But it really wasn’t a decision because once I had the summer that I had all the football schools just stopped talking to me and it really just came down to basketball for me. So I thought I was going to have a decision, but I ended up not having to make one.”

Rivals ranks Thompson No. 94 overall and No. 13 among all small forwards. The 6-foot-8 recruit becomes the third and final likely member of the Tigers’ 2025 class.

With his recruitment now behind him, Thompson can now fully focus on his final high school season. After that, he is looking forward to helping Clemson build on the successful season that saw the Tigers make a run to the Elite 8.

“Just the way Brownell and his staff have been able to build their program,” Thompson added. “A lot of recent success, obviously. I just want to come in and try to build off of that. Obviously, it’s in the past. It kind of reminds me of our football team a little bit too. Last year we make it to the state semifinals and this year we have a lot of high expectations. But you still have to start from day one. So just kind of kind of got that feeling with Clemson as well.”

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