It has been quite a summer for 6’6” rising senior Deriante Jenkins. In fact, it has been a couple of years for Jenkins.
It started as a sophomore for tiny 2A Lake Merion High School in Santee, South Carolina. This is where Jenkins made his initial mark winning a state championship and earning game MVP honors after his 25 point performance. At that time however, many felt Jenkins’ future was on the football field as a quarter back.
Jenkins was a freshman starter on the football, and then again as a sophomore. He was being actively recruited by the likes of Notre Dame and Clemson among others. As a sophomore Jenkins threw for 3,447 yards, rushed for 260 yards and amassed 28 total TDs.
After his junior year at Lake Merion, Jenkins decided to travel down to West Oaks High School in Orlando, Florida where he reclassified and decided to focus solely on basketball under coach Shawn Wiseman. After the year Wiseman has moved on, and it is looking like Jenkins will do the same and will play his final year at Hargrave Military in Chatham, Va.
Heading into the Summer Jenkins carried just four (4) offers and was not on any national rankings. Jenkins has participated in numerous Phenom Hoops events over the last couple years, heading into the Grassroots season Phenom Hoop Report wrote, “Again, people know Jenkins. However, he has taken his game to a new level. He left Lake Merion HS to head down to West Oaks, and with his reclass his game developed. Now people should be looking at Jenkins as a Top 100 type player in the 2016 class. He has great court awareness as a passer and play maker. He is also very long and athletic, allowing him to get to the rim as he pleases. The upside is there for more.”
Throughout the Grassroots season playing with Upward Stars SE on the Adidas Gauntlet, many saw the same thing in Jenkins that we did. He averaged 14 Points on 48% shooting to go along with his 5 Rebounds and 1 Steal per game. This Summer his offer list jumped from Four (4) to over twenty (20).
On Sunday, Jenkins trimmed his list down to 10 schools. That list is, Tennessee, Clemson, Rutgers, Indiana, LSU, South Carolina, VCU, Georgia, Missouri and Georgia Tech. Georgia is the most recent addition to the mix, “Georgia has recently started contacting a lot.”
Jenkins says that there are three (3) schools that are standing out above others in the recruitment process, “Texas, Indiana, and South Carolina are recruiting me pretty hard. Shaka is a great coach, a player’s coach. I didn’t realize the South Carolina campus was so nice. But honestly, there is no leader”
Santee, South Carolina is about 45 minutes southeast of Columbia, where the University of South Carolina is located. Being the hometown school, Jenkins stated, “I’ve visited a couple times, being from South Carolina I didn’t even know the campus was that nice. South Carolina stacks up well against the rest, me being from near-by and all. Teaming up again with PJ (Dozier) and potentially Seventh (Woods), you never know.”They stack up pretty good , me being from sc , teaming up w PJ again potentially Seventh you never know They stack up pretty good , me being from sc , teaming up w PJ again potentially Seventh you never know
Jenkins has a couple of visits on the horizon that he is looking forward to as well, “Ill head over to Columbia early this week, all the schools are trying to get me to come visit, Ive been talking to VCU too.”
Jenkins has great length, athleticism, and feel for the game. As we predicted earlier, Jenkins is now a consensus Top 100 player.