Deriante Jenkins has been a stand out everywhere he has gone. It has just taken the nation a while to come across him.
It started 3 years ago when then sophomore Deriante Jenkins led his Lake Marion High School team to the 2A South Carolina State Championship. It was that day that the 6’6” Jenkins solidified himself as a Division 1 basketball prospect, as a point guard. He finished that game with 12 points and 12 assists.
Up until that point, Jenkins was considered a football prospect. Clemson, Notre Dame and others were recruiting him as a quarter back. On the grid iron, that same sophomore season Jenkins teamed with current Clemson wide receiver, and good friend, Mike Williams to throw for 3,500 yards and 26 touch downs.
Jenkins finished an up and down junior year at Lake Marion (in Santee, South Carolina) before he decided to transfer to West Oaks High School in Orlando, Florida, and reclassify to the 2016 class. At West Oaks, Jenkins decided to focus solely on basketball, and he traveled the country sharing the back court with Rutgers signee Corey Sanders.
Then something happened for Jenkins. In high school Corey Sanders graduated, in AAU PJ Dozier aged out, all of a sudden Jenkins was the man again. He was able to dominate the ball again, he was able to show off his best attribute, his court awareness and vision.
Jenkins is a very long and very athletic 6’6”. He wields a 6’9” wing span, and has the ability to play point guard at the next level. At this point, Jenkins has narrowed his list to 6 schools, and set up 4 official visits.
Last weekend, Jenkins visited VCU, he was floored, “Will Wade made me a priority. I had no idea Richmond was that nice and the campus is right in the middle of everything. They don’t have football, so basketball is the main attraction.”
He is next visiting Tennessee this weekend, for their big televised game with Oklahoma. “Im going up there with Grant (Williams) and Jordan (Bone). Grant is awesome, we got a group chat going, I like him. We’ve talked about the possibility of playing together. It should be fun.”
Jenkins next has set up a visit with Rutgers, they are new to the mix but have really turned up the heat of late, “They got Corey and Kwe, I would love to be throwing lobs to them. I like Shoes (Vetrone) a lot too. He is really showing me love.”
The final visit that Jenkins has scheduled is to Clemson on October 3, “Yeah Im going to go over there, they’re local to my home and Mike (Williams) is up there.”
If you’re counting, that’s four visits. Jenkins says he wants to take all five. The battle for the fifth visit is LSU and South Carolina.
Jenkins says that he knows what he is looking for, he was to feel a lot of love from the school and wants early playing time, “I didn’t come for a post graduate year to go to college and sit out.”
Finally this summer, Jenkins cracked the national top 100 as he is in the 60-80 range across the board. However, there he is still under rated. Jenkins has the best court vision and IQ in most gyms he walks into. We made the statement while watching him that there is no way there are 30 players better than him in the country, the surrounding coaches shook their heads in agreement. It isn’t often that 6’6” point guards come around, and have 6’9” wing spans. He has a chance to be special. Hell he’s been special at every place he’s been.