Who is Kur Teng?
A name Friartown should get familiar with as Providence battles Michigan State and Rutgers for the consensus Top 40 recruit
Editor’s Note: All recruit rankings reflect On3 Consensus Rankings as of 2/21/23
News broke towards the middle of last week that 2024 4-star recruit Kur Teng would be making an official visit to Providence, taking in an eventual Friar beatdown from behind the PC bench.
Teng ranked #33 in the class of 2024, is a 6’4 wing originally from Manchester, New Hampshire, who has an innate ability to put the ball in the hoop. He plays high school hoops for Bradford Christian Academy out of Lawrence, MA and AAU ball for Mass Rivals, the same AAU program that once housed both David Duke Jr. and AJ Reeves.
Player Breakdown:
It’s funny that Teng plays for the same AAU program that DDJ once played for, because their games are eerily similar.
DDJ was able to leverage his length to be a better defender, but Teng is a much better shooter than Duke was coming out of high school. I think Teng has the raw scoring ability to be an immediate contributor at the next level as a freshmen.
The Competition:
For a player as highly touted as Kur Teng, his recruiting battle is not filled with blue bloods like you might imagine. Teng has essentially narrowed down his final 3 schools to Providence, Rutgers and Michigan State. He took an official visit to Michigan State in October, and was at the AMP this past Saturday to see the Providence outlast Villanova in front of 12,000+ Friar Fanatics. Teng also has an official visit with Rutgers scheduled for 2/25. While his timeline for a committment is unclear, I’d imagine Teng will commit to one of his final 3 programs sometime this spring before the summer AAU circuit really kicks off in June. Teng recently caught up with recruiting service On3 and here’s what he had to say about all 3 programs:
Providence: “Ed Cooley and Brian Blaney show a lot of love. They are a really good team. They are ranked within the top 25 right now. I feel they can fit me really well and they have a great team overall.”
Rutgers: “I really like how they play hard. They’ve been consistent in recruiting me. They think I can come in and help them win in a lot of ways, scoring, rebounding, defense.”
Michigan State: “They are still on me heavy and I mess with them a lot too. Doug Wojcik recruits me and Tom Izzo texts me a lot at times. Their playstyle is a lot like my high school’s playstyle. They really set the bar pretty high with their visit. Their team is really close. It is like a family."
Never going to pull a ton of value from recruit quotes, so here’s my thoughts: In the past Michigan State should probably be favored to win recruiting battles for a player like Kur Teng. Extremely successful program with an iconic coach and can point to a plethora of players across the NBA - shit recruits care about. However, Michigan State has had a few up and down seasons recently, and there are legitimate questions about how long head coach Tom Izzo, 68, will stick around. Rutgers on the other hand, is a program that is steadfastly on the rise. A season or two ago I would’ve said there is no way in hell that Providence should ever lose a recruiting battle to Rutgers, but Head Coach Steve Pikiell has done an incredible job injecting life into a historically downtrodden program. He’d cultivated an impressive culture, and the results on the court are starting to follow, sound familiar? The Scarlet Knights have also already inked the #5 overall recruit in the class of 2024, 5-star Tennessee native Ace Bailey. Great players like to play together, and with Bailey already signed, that gives Rutgers a not-insignificant leg up over Michigan State and Providence. Every little bit matters when you’re bidding for the services of a player like this:
If I had to handicap the current leaderboard for Kur Teng I’d say 1) Rutgers 2) Providence 3) Michigan State. It is well within the realm of possibility that Teng commits to Providence as the headliner of the Class of 2024. Who knows what pitch Ed Cooley and assistant coach Brian Blaney were giving Teng and his family on Sunday morning in downtown Providence - but let’s hope it works.
Last Call:
While we’re on the topic of future Friars with NBA potential, let’s quickly revisit some former Friars in the NBA. I wrote recently about a few former Providence stars spread out across the NBA and G-League and one of those names was Kris Dunn. After a productive season with the Washington Wizards G-League affiliate, I speculated that Dunn would likely be signing an NBA contract in the coming weeks. Well well well, not 24 hours later and Kris Dunn has officially signed a 10-day contract with the Utah Jazz.
Utah is currently on the outside looking in of the NBA playoff picture, but certainly within striking distance. I’d expect Dunn to get a fair amount of playing time for a team that’s in a bit of a transitional mode, and if I were a betting man, I’d anticipate Dunn to playing well enough to enter the offseason as an unrestricted free agent with a few teams bidding for his services.