Montverde Academy four-star combo guard Dante Allen announced Friday that he will be reopening his recruitment ahead of the 2025 season.
Allen was committed to Villanova but Wildcats announced earlier this month that they would not retain head coach Kyle Neptune after three consecutive seasons of missing the NCAA Tournament.
The four-star guard committed to Villanova back in October of 2024, selecting the Wildcats over Georgia, Miami and Tennessee. Allen planned to follow in his fathers footsteps as his dad Malik, played for the Wildcats from 1996 through 2000.
Allen, who plays for Montverde Academy is the backcourt teammate of Indiana 2025 signee four-star Trent Sisley. Sisley is trying to recruit Allen to Bloomington with him, as Sisley recently double down on his commitment to Indiana despite Mike Woodson stepping down after missing the NCAA tournament.
Allen is rated as the No. 64 ranked prospect as well as the No. 12 ranked combo guard and No. 13 overall ranked player in the state of Florida, according to 247Sports.
The 6’4 combo guard is averaging 11.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game while shooting 48 percent from the field and 37 % from the three-point line this season for Montverde Academy after spending the previous three years at Riviera Prep.
Indiana officials announced Tuesday afternoon that they hired Darian DeVries to follow retiring coach Mike Woodson.
DeVries coached Drake University to a 150-55 record and three NCAA appearances in six seasons from 2018-2024, left last spring for West Virginia. At WVU DeVries was 19-13 and just missed the NCAA Tournament in Darian DeVries’ only season there.
Indiana did itself a favor bringing Darian DeVries in before transfer portal opening
Even though Indiana had already lost four players to the transfer portal, both before and after Darian DeVries was announced as the next head basketball coach, Indiana played their cards the best way possible.
Just 36 hours after finding out they would not be playing in the NCAA Tournament, or any postseason tournament for that matter, the Indiana Hoosiers quickly closed the book on the 2024-2025 season and started a new book, the Darian DeVries edition of Indiana basketball and hired the former West Virginia coach quickly.
Bringing in DeVries when they did was a smart play on Indiana’s part because the transfer portal was set to open less than a week later. The portal officially opened on Monday, March 24, and is set to close about a month later on April 22. That means that DeVries had six days to get settled into his new position before he had the task of making some phone calls.
Players in the portal probably aren’t going to want to go to a program that doesn’t have their head coach yet, a program like West Virginia, so with DeVries at Indiana already, it makes the Hoosiers a more enticing landing spot for any prospective transfers.
Other programs made quick work of their coaching hirings as well like Texas hiring Xavier’s Sean Miller less than 24 hours after parting ways with Rodney Terry. Even though Iowa waited longer to hire their coach, they still brought in Ben McCollum the day the portal opened, which will probably help the Hawkeyes.
DeVries had the ability to talk with the guys still in the program before the portal opened and sense who was going to stick around adn who was planning to leave, helping him make his plan for who he wanted to target in the portal. All in all, Indiana did everything exactly the way they should have in bringing in a coach quickly after the season ended. To be fair, they had time to really consider their options, knowing Woodson was already leaving at the end of the season.
