UConn’s entire starting five received an invite.
The 2024 NBA Combine will have plenty of UConn flavor. The league released the list of players invited to the combine — held May 12-19 at Wintrust Arena at DePaul’s home court in Chicago — and all five starters from the Huskies’ 2024 title team will be making appearance.
Stephon Castle, Donovan Clingan, Alex Karaban, Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer all earned the invite after helping the Huskies to a dominant title run for the program’s second-straight title and sixth overall.
Castle and Clingan have garnered plenty of buzz already since the Huskies cut down the nets one month ago, and are receiving plenty of buzz to go early in the draft. The NBA has deemed Castle and Clingan as two of the top six prospects available in this year’s draft class, meaning teams selecting in the lottery and the team with the No. 15 pick will get access to medical records prior to making a selection.
The NBA sent teams a composite ranking of the Top 10 2024 draft prospects, as determined by a blend of publicly available rankings, a panel of experts and a retained-scouting service. This determines which teams will receive medical results based on which tiers players fall in.… pic.twitter.com/Nl4IeyjYWq
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) May 3, 2024
Newton and Spencer project as second rounders currently, but both could raise their respective draft stocks with strong performances in Chicago. Karaban is largely in the same boat, projecting as a late first rounder in some spots, but largely going in the second round in mock drafts. He will have the luxury of going through the combine and talking with teams and scouts before having to make a decision about staying in the draft poll or returning back to UConn for his junior season as the deadline for that decision is not until June 16.
Aside from the Huskies, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Trey Alexander and Baylor Scheierman of Creighton join Marquette’s Tyler Kolek and Oslo’s Ighodaro and Providence’s Devin Carter as other members of the Big East at the combine.