The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Castle will ‘never’ decommit from UConn
Stephon Castle wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, he knew something was coming.
“I had a feeling,” the UConn men’s basketball commit admitted.
Sure enough, following a workout at Newton High in Georgia on Thursday, Castle was approached by a few of his teammates showing him a Twitter post from what appeared to be the account for @VerbalCommits, a respected college recruiting site.
“2023 four star prospect Stephon Castle has decomitted from Connecticut,” the post read.
A minor panic spread throughout the UConn Twitterverse before people quickly realized the date of the post: March 31. You know, a day before April Fool’s Day.
It was, indeed, fake news. The account was fake, named @VerbalCommitts (note the extra “t”), and also falsely posted that Bristol’s Donovan Clingan was decommitting from UConn. The Castle family was quick to dispel the “news.”
“(Stephon Castle) has NOT DECOMITTED from (UConn),” Castle’s dad, Stacey, tweeted. “Respectfully please don’t put things out about my son without checking with me his DAD! Don’t know where y’all got this..... but it’s absolutely FAKE NEWS!!!”
“I was like, ‘People are really getting creative,’” Stephon’s mom, Quannette, said on Monday. “‘They really want Stephon not to go to UConn. Why is this?’”
Stephon’s reply was much more succinct.
“Never,” he tweeted shortly after the post appeared on Thursday. “#BleedBlue.”
He maintained that position on Monday afternoon.
“I wouldn’t have committed if I wasn’t 100-percent into it,” he told Hearst Connecticut Media.
In fact, Castle, who got a strong sense of what the “UConn family” is all about while on his official visit to Storrs last fall, recently got his first introduction to another member of the program’s extended family. At the Underclassmen AllAmerican Games in Atlanta on March 27, Castle scored 26 points to lead his team to a 35-point victory. His coach for the game was none other than Ricky Moore, a nationalchampion player (1999) and assistant coach (2014) at UConn.
Not that Moore told Castle about that before the game.
“Because he might have thought he was gonna get more playing time,” Moore said.
Stacey Castle told his son about Moore’s UConn ties once the game was over.
“I talked to him after and told him, if he wants to be really good, he’s got to limit his distractions,” Moore said.
No doubt, Moore was impressed with Castle’s talents.
“What surprised me was, he does a little bit of everything,” Moore added. “He’s 6-6, a big body, can play the point, two, three and the four, I think, if you go small. He can shoot it, but he has to continue to work on his shot. And he really sees the floor. That’s what got my eye. I was like, ‘Man, he really can see the floor.’ He’s gonna be a great addition.”
Castle played mostly as a point guard for Newton this past season, leading the team to the state Final Four. He sometimes moved over to shooting guard when a smaller guard came in off the bench to play point, but otherwise considers himself a point — which is what UConn recruited him to be.
“He’s a point guard, no doubt about it,” Moore added. “If he focuses, he really has a chance to go to the next level.”
With R.J. Cole deciding not to take advantage of his extra year of eligibility and Jalen Gaffney and Rahsool Diggins entering the transfer portal, UConn currently has a void at point guard.
“I didn’t expect them to leave, knowing that R.J.’s not gonna be there,” Castle said of Gaffney and Diggins.
Still, don’t expect Castle to reclassify to 2022 and emerge on UConn’s campus for next season. The Huskies are currently hitting the transfer portal for guards, and anyway, Castle’s not quite ready to make that jump.
“There was a little bit of talk about it,” Quannette admitted. “That’s definitely gonna be something to really talk about. But I believe that he’s gonna go back to high school. There hasn’t been any decision on him reclassifying.”
Added Stephon: “I’ve thought about it, but I’d rather take the extra year of work to get myself bigger and stronger before I go into college. I’m not trying to throw myself there because I want to go there so early.”
Castle hasn’t broached the subject with the coaching staff yet, but probably will this weekend in Indianapolis, where his Atlanta XPress AAU team will compete in a tournament with Dan Hurley expected to be in attendance.
Moore told him after the Underclassmen game that he needs to continue to work on his shot and always work on his ballhandling.
“He has to get stronger ... but he’ll have all those resources,” Moore added. “The thing that he’s blessed with is that size. And his basketball IQ is very, very high.”
Castle’s goals for the spring and summer will be to keep improving and leading the talented Atlanta XPress team, hopefully get invites to Stephen Curry’s Camp, the Pangos All-American Camp and a return invitation to the NBA’s Top 100 camp.
As for backing out of his verbal commitment to UConn? Fake news.
Never.