Andre Drummond was a five-star recruit and ranked as one of the nation’s best prospects coming out of high school, but he ended up being a walk-on at the University of Connecticut.
He has gone down as one of the greatest walk-ons in NCAA history, and Drummond recently spoke out about the circumstances that led to it.
“I think to this day, I might be the first high school player to ever tweet where he’s going,” Drummond said on the Varsity House podcast. “So, I tweeted it, got a phone call 10 minutes later, it’s Jim Calhoun. He’s like, ‘Yo, are you serious?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I want to come.’ He said, ‘Alright, (but) one problem, we have no more scholarships.'”
“I’m like, ‘Okay, well I’m going to hang up now.’ He said, ‘Wait, maybe you could pay for school? We know that you’re not going to do f****** four years of college here.’ So he’s like, ‘We could strip the scholarship from one of our players to give to you and just put him on financial aid. Would you want to do that?’ At the time, I didn’t know who he was till I got there, but DeAndre Daniels was the player they were talking about. I was like that’s not right, I don’t want to do that. So I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t want it. Let him keep it. I’ll just pay for school and figure it out from there.’ So, yeah I paid for school.”
No. 4 UConn takes on No. 5 Miami in todays Final Four matchup👀
Andre Drummond shares the crazy untold story behind his recruitment process at UConn.
@AndreDrummond @ShaunCrawf20 pic.twitter.com/G2ILXB4I4C
— VARSITY HOUSE PODCAST (@varsityhousepod) April 1, 2023
Daniels would have certainly appreciated Drummond not wanting to go that route. It was a great gesture on Drummond’s part, as he easily could have demanded that a highly-rated player like him should get that scholarship.
In his only season at UConn, Drummond averaged 10.0 PPG to go with 7.6 RPG, but he wasn’t able to lead them to glory in the NCAA tournament. He did get to see his college team win the national title this year, though, as they beat the Aztecs in the championship game.
Andre Drummond Has Taken Some Measures For His Mental Health
Drummond’s NBA career hasn’t quite gone to plan, but he remains a serviceable big man even today. He is having a decent 2022-23 season off the bench for the Chicago Bulls, too, averaging 6.0 PPG and 6.7 RPG.
While things are okay on the court, Drummond is dealing with some issues off it. He recently announced he’ll be deleting his social media and will change his number as he wants to focus on his mental health. He also sent a strong message that if anyone else is struggling with it, then it’s okay to ask for help.
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