Syracuse Basketball: Former 4-star center recruit from D.C. to enter portal

Hunter Dickinson, one of the top big men in the country and who was recruited by Syracuse basketball in high school, is entering the NCAA’s transfer portal, according to multiple media reports.

The 7-foot-1 Dickinson, a top-flight center in collegiate hoops, is from Alexandria, Va., and played at the legendary DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md., where he won all kinds of awards and honors during his four years there.

In the 2022-23 season, Dickinson was a junior at Big Ten Conference member Michigan, where he has played quite well during his three years with the Wolverines. Michigan didn’t have a particularly great 2022-23 stanza, going 18-16 overall and falling on the road to Vanderbilt in the NIT’s second round.

Dickinson, in his junior term for Michigan, was excellent. He played in all 34 games, averaging 32.7 minutes per contest. He tallied averages, according to ESPN statistics, of 18.5 points, 9.0 rebounds, 1.5, assists and 1.8 blocks per game, while hitting on 56.0 percent from the field, 42.1 percent from beyond the arc, and 72.7 percent from the charity stripe.

For his efforts in 2022-23, Dickinson was named to the All-Big Ten second team. In his tenure with the Wolverines, Dickinson has been named to the All-Big Ten first squad twice, and he was also a second-team All-American as a freshman in the 2020-21 campaign.

Former Syracuse basketball recruit Hunter Dickinson is entering the transfer portal.

Dickinson said via Twitter on August 10, 2018, that he had received a scholarship offer from the Orange. Throughout his recruiting process, he landed more than 20 offers from a range of high-major programs.

Besides Syracuse basketball, his offer sheet included Duke, Florida State, Louisville, Notre Dame, Purdue, Alabama, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Providence, South Carolina, Stanford, Tennessee, Southern California, Virginia and Wake Forest.

In the 2020 class coming out of DeMatha Catholic, most recruiting services rated Dickinson as a top-50 national prospect and a top-10 center.

The industry-generated 247Sports Composite had Dickinson, within the 2020 cycle, at No. 43 across the country, No. 10 at center and No. 2 in Maryland. Per his bio on the Michigan athletics department Web site, he was named the 2020 Gatorade player of the year in Maryland. That same year, Dickinson was also on the MaxPreps All-America second team.

In grassroots basketball, Dickinson was a member of the Washington, D.C.-based Team Takeover in Nike’s EYBL league. Team Takeover captured the 2018 Peach Jam team title.

Syracuse basketball head coach Adrian Autry was a coach for Team Takeover a while back when it was known as Triple Threat. And new ‘Cuse assistant coach Brenden Straughn was the associate head coach of Team Takeover when Dickinson and his colleagues won Peach Jam in 2018.

Looking ahead to the Orange’s 2023-24 roster, the team could have three to four centers on its roster, depending on whether senior Jesse Edwards elects to come back to the Hill for a fifth year granted to college basketball players by the NCAA amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other centers are sophomore Mounir Hima, freshman Peter Carey and 2023 three-star prospect William Patterson, who is a senior at The Patrick School in Hillside, N.J.