PEORIA — The Bradley Braves won a recruiting battle for a player from a basketball family.
Xander Alarie, a 6-foot-8, 235-pound forward, joined the Braves out of the NCAA transfer portal and delivered his commitment late Monday night.
He is the son of Mark Alarie, the former Duke star and first-round pick of the Denver Nuggets in the 1986 NBA Draft. Xander’s sister, Bella, played four years at Princeton and was Dallas’ first-round pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft.
The Braves won a recruiting battle that included Hawaii, William & Mary, Iona, Furman, Oakland, Florida Gulf Coast University, Richmond, St. Joe’s and Fordham.
A native of Bethesda, Maryland, Xander Alarie starred at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and went on to the Miami Hurricanes, where he redshirted in 2024-25.
He transferred to Northeastern for the 2025-26 season and averaged 10.3 points and 7.4 rebounds per game. He started all 11 games he appeared in and reached double figures in scoring in five of them.
He suffered a season-ending injury to his non-shooting shoulder after that.
His signature games were against Syracuse, when he scored 19 points and added 11 rebounds, and Wake Forest (15 points, 6 rebounds) and Harvard (career-high 23 points). He became the first Northeastern player to record double-doubles in consecutive games since Shawn James in 2005.
He joins Bradley as a redshirt sophomore.
Dave Eminian is the Journal Star senior writer and sports columnist, and covers Bradley men’s basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on X.com @icetimecleve.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Bradley basketball gets power forward, son of former NBA first-round pick
Reporting by Dave Eminian, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
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