{"id":136287,"date":"2025-09-06T04:37:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T04:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136287\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T04:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T04:37:06","slug":"top-26-center-arafan-diane-names-arkansas-basketball-among-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136287\/","title":{"rendered":"Top &#8217;26 center Arafan Diane names Arkansas basketball among finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arkansas basketball was named one of five finalists for Arafan Diane, the nation\u2019s top big man in the class of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Diane, 7-0 and 293 pounds, of Norwalk, Iowa, listed Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Virginia and Houston in his top five, according to national recruiting analyst Joe Tipton.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He played for Iowa United on the Adidas 3SSB Circuit and led the league with 10.8 rebounds a game while averaging 18.6 points, 2 assists and 1.5 blocked shots per game. One industry ranking lists him as a 4-star recruit, the No. 1 center and the No. 19 overall prospect in the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Diane, who is originally from Guinea in West Africa, has offers from Arkansas, Kentucky, Kansas, BYU, Virginia, Indiana, Houston, Texas, Iowa, Illinois, Florida, Texas Tech, Michigan, Oregon and others.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Diane is scheduled to make the following official visits: Kentucky on Sept. 12\u201314; Arkansas on Sept. 19\u201321; Virginia on Sept. 26\u201328; Indiana on Oct. 17\u201319; and Houston on Oct. 24\u201326<\/p>\n<p>            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Untitled_design_50_QIUzZmi_t261.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                        <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wholehogsports.com\/staff\/richard-davenport\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Davenport<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Richard Davenport has covered recruiting for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and wholehogsports.com since 2007. He appears weekly on &#8220;The Morning Rush&#8221; with Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft on 95.3 FM in Fort Smith, 96.3 FM in Hot Springs, 104.3 FM in Harrison\/Mountain Home and 99.5 FM in Fayetteville, and on &#8220;Out of Bounds&#8221; with Wess Moore and Joe Franklin on 103.7 FM in Little Rock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arkansas basketball was named one of five finalists for Arafan Diane, the nation\u2019s top big man in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-136287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}