Of the top 20 prospects in the 2021 recruiting cycle for men’s basketball, three elected to bypass college for the NBA G League.
Two of the top 12 recruits for 2023 have joined the newly formed Overtime Elite, so they will forgo their final two years of high school in addition to their freshman seasons of college.
Heralded hoops players have more avenues than ever before in which to profit earlier and earlier on their skills, but Kennedy Chandler decided to give it a good ol’ college try. The nation’s No. 1 point guard in the 2021 recruiting class is a Tennessee signee and is eager to get going on a team containing the veteran nucleus of Victor Bailey Jr., John Fulkerson, Josiah-Jordan James and Santiago Vescovi.
“I had the option to go to the G League, because they reached out, but my goal was always to have a college experience,” Chandler said Wednesday afternoon on a Zoom call. “My dreams have always included going to a Final Four and winning a national championship. I always wanted to take the college route, and I knew that Tennessee was the right place for me.”
The 6-foot, 172-pounder from Memphis will be closer to home in Knoxville than he was this past season, when he played at Sunrise Christian Academy in Wichita, Kansas. The UT campus is significantly closer for Kennedy compared to Riga, Latvia, where he helped the United States earn a gold medal last weekend at the FIBA U19 World Cup.