This article originally appeared in the Nov. 7, 2016, issue of Sports Illustrated. Subscribe to the magazine here. Read scouting reports on every team in the top 20 here, and find the rest of our college basketball preview package here.
The dozens of NBA scouts who were wowed by Deng Adel during college workouts at the adidas Nations Camp in Long Beach, Calif., last summer may have been surprised, but Rick Pitino wasn’t. “When you put him in an unstructured, all-star-type event, he’s going to perform well,” Pitino says of the 6' 7", 200-pound sophomore forward from Sudan.