While the first domino hasn’t yet fallen on Arkansas basketball’s much anticipated signing class of 2025, it’s only a matter of time at this point.
On Tuesday, the second-rated guard in the class of 2025, Maleek Thomas, announced that Arkansas is in his top 7 choices. On Wednesday, five-star Jasper Johnson cut his list to a final five of Arkansas and Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Louisville. Meanwhile, fans are waiting with bated breath for Friday when the nation’s top-rated senior guard Darius Acuff Jr., will announce his destination from a final three list of Arkansas, Michigan and Kansas.
Of all the potential prizes out there, however, the most enticing is 6-foot-9 wing AJ Dybantsa, the top-ranked recruit among rising seniors. He’s also the only recruit who grades out as essentially perfect according to 247Sports:
Dybantsa has separated himself from the pack through his tenacity paired with high-end motor, skill and an athleticism that evokes a slightly less springy Andrew Wiggins.
His ability to use his body to get to the rim and work angles for his shot are highly advanced for a 17-year-old, a testament to the well-earned betting on himself that’s arrived from thousands of practice hours with coaches, trainers and more recently even NBA players.
One such coach, Charles Quarles, is the founder of the AAU program Expressions Elite where Dybantsa got a start coming out of Brockton, Massachusetts: “He still has so much room to grow, to get stronger, to really understand his own game, where his sweet spots are,” Quarles told The Athletic.
“Like Kobe or Jordan, and I’m not saying he’s those guys, over the years getting a little stronger and developing some spots where you know you are just impossible to guard. Once AJ gets comfortable with that, I think he can be a generational talent.”
AJ Dybantsa’s Recruiting
Dybantsa is finishing a very busy summer that saw him star for the U17 national team and stand out at Nike Peach Jam, where Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari has watched him play among other blue-chip recruits:
Until now, he’s allowed his father “Ace” Dybantsa to handle most of his recruiting while he’s gone on only two official visits – to USC and Auburn. After Peach Jam, Dybantsa plans to announce his top 8 schools from the 32 scholarship offers he’s received. He told Field of 68’s Jeff Goodman and Rob Dauster that he’ll wait until some time next year during his senior season to announce his commitment, while his father has said they are aiming to announce in February.
The Field of 68 folks have as good a read on Dybantsa’s recruiting as anybody given the multiple interviews they have done with him, and Goodman says he believes Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Auburn and BYU have strong shots at ending up in Dybantsa’s Top 8.
BYU is included here because Dybantsa will spend his senior season at the sparkling new campus of Utah Prep at the entrance of Zion National Park, and the Cougars are absolutely loaded when it comes to NIL funds. So much so, in fact, that it appears they have already won a head-to-head battle with John Calipari and the Razorbacks when Egor Demin ended up at BYU after reports of an NIL offer upwards to $2 million.
Apparently, BYU basketball coaches are using the Morman school’s moral code – no premarital sex, no drinking, no marijuana – as a recruiting tool, according to college basketball analyst Aaron Torres. The basic pitch is “Come here, live clean for 8 months and focus on your craft, away from the kind of distractions that normally attend star freshmen players. If you aren’t able to stay away from distractions for 8 months here, you’re going to have a much harder time of it once you’re in the NBA.”
Goodman, however, thinks that living in Utah for nearly a year could actually work against the Cougars’ chances for Dybantsa: “I feel like being in the state for eight months now coming up, he could be, ‘You know what? I want a little bit more action than being in Utah.’ Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it could backfire,” he said on a recent podcast.
“People can assume because we’re going to Utah Prep that we’re going to BYU,” Ace Dybantsa told KSR. “When we were in California, people were saying we were going to USC. It doesn’t really matter to us.”
The Dybantsas have already shown a desire to move around the nation. Last season, AJ played at Prolific Prep in Napa, Calif., alongside Tyran Stokes, the No. 1 recruit in the class of 2026. Before that, he lived in Massachusetts but made no bones about wanting to get out. “I’ve been living in Massachusetts my whole life,” he told CBS. “I want to move. I don’t want to live here forever.”
AJ Dybantsa’s Possible Destinations
So, reading between the lines, it’s probably safe to write off UConn’s chances. At this juncture, it appears Arkansas’ top competition for AJ Dybantsa may other schools in the South.
Given how he personally knows Jayson Tatum and Paolo Banchero, and also enjoys the game of Brandon Ingram, one would assume Duke could also be a player here.
Auburn will be formidable given Bruce Pearl has such a track record of developing big wings like Jabari Smith, Isaac Okoro and (the other) Jaylin Williams for the pros. It’s no surprise that Dybantsa puts such development at the top of his list of what he wants from his hopefully single college season. “My goal is to be ‘one and done,” he told Goodman and Dauster at Peach Jam, the day after he had done an evening training session with Chris Paul and Paul George. “So a coach that’s going to get me there the safest and easiest way. A winning program, I’m not just going there to lose.”
Given this objective, John Calipari has an advantage over other college coaches because of the sheer number of NBA stars he’s coached at Kentucky, even if his big-wing types like Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Kevin Knox haven’t exactly panned out like his guards and big men.
Below are three other factors that should play into the favor of the Razorbacks.
Arkansas Basketball Recruiting Pluses
AJ Dybantsa told the Field of 68 that the current plan for him is to live with his father during his college season.
So, theoretically for Ace, the actual quality of the town will matter more than the college campus itself. In that regard, Fayetteville blows Tuscaloosa and Auburn out of the water. Nobody should voluntarily want to sentence themselves to doing a year in Tuscaloosa or Auburn, outside of the campuses, when Fayetteville is an alternative.
For at least seven straight years, the crown jewel of the Ozarks got top marks for best place to live in the SEC.
Also, when asked about the NBA players he’s most studied, AJ Dybantsa mentioned Kevin Durant as his favorite, but then rattled off a list including Ingram, George, Anthony Edwards and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Gilgeous-Alexander has become one of the most devastatingly efficient scorers in modern NBA history, with a deep repertoire of shifty moves that Dybantsa would be wise to emulate.
It just so happens that when/if they talk, Gilgeous-Alexander can also explain how his college season under Calipari helped him build a foundation for the first-team All-NBA standout he is now.
More noteworthy than that, though, is Dybantsa’s tie to another former Wildcat who played under Calipari.
That would be Terrence Clarke, another Boston area native who played at Kentucky in the 2020-21 season before dying in a car wreck in April 2021 at the age of 19. Clarke was also a five-star recruit who was considered the best prospect to come out of the Boston metro in years.
Dybantsa knew Clarke and his family and even got to train with him a few times.
“He was like my big brother,” Dybantsa told The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker. “Since he passed, I do this basketball stuff for him. I still talk to his mom and his little brother, who’s like 6, but he comes to the gym and shoots on the little hoop. I give his mom a hug every time I see her. Sometimes she’s crying, but I try to comfort her.”
“That was like my idol, for real. He was a star. Just trying to carry his legacy.”
Assuming AJ Dybantsa does eventually make it to Fayetteville for an official visit with John Calipari, there’s little question whose memory will take center stage in what’s bound to be an emotional conversation.
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Listen to the entire interview with AJ Dybantsa below:
Hear more about other top recruits Calipari is targeting below. For instance, the Boozer twins are discussed as a package deal starting at 20:00:
More on Arkansas basketball from BoAS here:
