The Duke basketball recruiting team reached out this week to a rising high school junior whose surname sure seems to fit with his style of play around the basket.
Westtown School (Pa.) center Dereck Lively is a 7-foot, 205-pound four-star who ranks No. 40 overall on the 247Sports 2022 Composite. As a bouncy big man with a reported 7-foot-2 wingspan, he's best known for aggressively seeking out blocks and putback dunks — particularly effective on the receiving end of alley-oops in transition.
Lively, the grandson of a Xavier men's basketball alum and the child of a former 1,000-point scorer for the Penn State women's hoops program, currently holds 11 offers, including from the alma maters of his mom and now-late granddad in addition to notable recent ones from Pitt, LSU, and Maryland.