Oct. 8
The DePaul men’s basketball program has received another verbal commitment from a player who has yet to reach high school.
California eighth grader Skyy Clark announced on his Instagram page Sunday evening that he has verbally committed to DePaul, supposedly to play alongside Chicago eighth grade star Amari Bailey who committed to the Blue Demons in August. The two have played together at MSHTV elite camp.
“I want to announce that I verbally commit to DePaul University,” Clark wrote in a post on his Instagram page. “It has always been a dream for me and Amari Bailey to play college ball together. I’m from the Midwest (Minnesota) and cold weather is in my blood. We’re starting our own trend, fab 5 in the making.”
The latest rankings from Future150.com have the 5-foot-11-inch guard ranked No. 4 in the class of 2022, while Coast2CoastPreps.com had him rated eighth in their latest rankings that came out prior to the 2016-2017 basketball season.
Clark joins 6-foot-2-inch 2022 guard Bailey, while the university offered top class of 2022 player Emoni Bates a scholarship in September. Bailey trained under current DePaul assistant coach Tim Anderson as a member of the MeanStreets AAU team.
Verbal commitments are non-binding. Players can’t officially sign with universities until their junior year of high school, so we will be waiting a while to know for sure if either player ends up in Lincoln Park.
Oct. 9
With four forwards and one center scheduled to graduate after this season, the DePaul men’s basketball program will need fresh bodies to man the frontcourt in 2018.
A verbal commitment tonight from Ukrainian-born power forward George Maslennikov will help ease the issue. The class of 2018 two-star recruit announced his decision to become a Blue Demon in a screenshotted message on his Twitter account.
“First of all I want to thank my family that gave me a chance to play basketball in U.S. and supporting my every year since I was born,” Maslennikov wrote on Twitter. “I want to thank all of my high school coaches that helped me to get better through all of these years, especially I want to thank Coach G that helped me to come here and become a better player and a person. Going to my senior year God blessed me by giving me opportunity to earn offers from certain colleges and gave me a chance to decide where I want to go. I want to thank everyone who supported and still supporting me. I want to thank every coach who recruited me and came to watch my games/workouts. And last but not least I want to thank my teammates who were like my second family all of those years. I made my decision and I’m happy to announce my commitment to DePaul University.”
The 6-foot-9-inch power forward played for the Atlanta Express which is an Under Armour sponsored travel team based in Atlanta, Georgia. He goes to school at Holy Spirit Preparatory School in Atlanta and helped the school capture its first state championship in basketball in March.
If Maslennikov stays true to his verbal commitment, he will join current freshmen Paul Reed and Jaylen Butz in the Blue Demons 2018 front court.