Syracuse basketball and former Big East foes recruiting 4-star guard Dante Allen hard
By Neil Adler
Syracuse basketball only recently offered a scholarship to 2025 four-star shooting guard Dante Allen from Florida, but it appears that the top-100 national prospect is fast becoming a priority target for the 'Cuse in the high school junior cycle.
The Orange extended an offer to the 6-foot-4 Allen in late April, per his Instagram page. He's one of at least four 2025 prospects who have received an offer from the Syracuse basketball staff in recent weeks.
In a post on X this week from recruiting analyst Jake Lieberman, Allen said the four college squads currently in the most frequent communication with him are Villanova, Notre Dame, Marquette and Syracuse basketball.
That's a whole lot of Big East Conference flavor, past and present. Both the Orange and the Fighting Irish used to be members of the Big East but are now a part of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Long-time Big East team Villanova won recent national championships in 2016 and 2018, while also making a run to the Final Four in 2022.
Marquette, meanwhile, has proven not only one of the best Big East groups over the past two seasons, but also one of the premier units around the country, earning No. 2 seeds in both the 2023 and the 2024 NCAA Tournaments.
Syracuse basketball is recruiting 2025 four-star guard Dante Allen hard.
As a junior during the recently completed 2023-24 high school season, Allen was fabulous. Competing for the Riviera Preparatory School in Miami, per MaxPreps, he averaged 21.0 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.4 steals and 3.0 assists per contest, while making 59 percent from the field, 45 percent from beyond the arc, and 83 percent from the free-throw line.
Allen, understandably, captured a bunch of awards and honors for his outstanding junior year, in a term where Riviera Prep sported a 25-8 overall mark and claimed its second consecutive Florida High School Athletic Association ("FHSAA") Class 3A state tournament championship.
According to recruiting services and his social media accounts, Allen's growing offer sheet includes schools such as Michigan, Villanova, Memphis, Miami, Florida Gulf Coast, UCF, LSU, Illinois, Creighton, Georgetown, Marquette and Notre Dame.
This spring and summer on the AAU circuit, Allen is suiting up for one of the top grassroots basketball programs nationwide, the 17U team of the Miami-based Nightrydas Elite in Nike’s EYBL league.
Allen, ranked as high as No. 69 nationally in the 2025 class by ESPN and deemed a top-15 guard, is off to a tremendous start on the EYBL circuit, which so far has conducted two sessions, in Memphis, Tenn., and the Atlanta area.
He's averaging 14.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.2 assists per affair as Nightrydas Elite has gone 5-1. The experts at The Circuit named Allen to their All-EYBL Session I second team for his play in Memphis.
Following the EYBL's recent second session in the Atlanta region, Rivals.com national analyst Jason Jordan had some intriguing things to say about Allen. Allen and his Nightrydas Elite colleagues are significant contenders to cut down the nets at the EYBL's annual Peach Jam tournament in July.
It's exciting that Syracuse basketball coaches seem to be prioritizing Allen, and I'll continue to track his recruitment as well as his upcoming AAU performances.