FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas already has a talent-loaded 2018 basketball recruiting class that is viewed as the nation’s best, and an unofficial visitor this weekend could enhance it.
Houston Cypress Falls junior forward DeShang “D.J.” Weaver (6-7, 200 pounds) - ranked as a four-star prospect by ESPN.com - came to Fayetteville to check out the Razorbacks with his mother Angela Williams, the women’s track coach at Prairie View A&M.
“This trip really helped Arkansas with me,” Weaver said. “It gave me a chance to meet with the players that would be here when I got on campus as well as visit with two of the ones that are getting here this next year. There is a lot of talent here and a lot coming.”
“There seems to be a really good culture,” Weaver said. “I like the style of basketball they play and really like the culture.”
Weaver - who did not play high school or AAU basketball last season - will play at Cypress Falls this high school season and with the Arkansas Hawks AAU program next spring and summer.
He will be joined on that Hawks' team by four Arkansas 2018 commits - Thomasville, Ga., center Reggie Perry (6-10, 225), Little Rock Parkview forward Ethan Henderson (6-9, 190), Fort Smith Northside shooting guard Isaiah Joe (6-2, 160) and Jonesboro point guard Desi Sills (6-1, 170).
Perry is ESPN’s No. 31 player nationally in the class, Henderson No. 60 and they join Joe as four stars in those rankings, while Weaver and Joe are just outside those top 60 rankings.
"The Hawks thing is a fresh start in a different environment that I am excited to experience," Weaver said.
He is working on his weaknesses to make them strengths.
“I am continuing to work on my weaknesses, which are mainly ball handling, spacing, more the mental aspects of the game more than the athletic bit and pieces such as running, jumping and all that stuff," Weaver said.
Weaver got a chance to check out the academic side at Arkansas as well as the athletic one.
“I am leaning toward the business aspect of things,” Weaver said. “I just met with the business department and they gave me a good explanation of what they are doing here.
“This trip was a very good trip. I like it here. This is a very good place and somewhere that I could definitely see myself playing.
“I am going to give everyone a chance and do some inspection, but this place has made a big, big first impression on me.”
Arkansas, Oregon, Texas, Houston, TCU, Baylor, Texas A&M, Kansas, Stanford Virginia, Virginia Tech and LSU are among the schools recruiting him.
“He has a good gamut and list of schools that are looking at him and he is kind if evaluating the schools, the academic side and the athletic side, as he wants a good balance,” Angela Williams said.
“He is looking at the 2017 group that is coming in to play next year as he is going into his senior year to try and feel out who he will be playing with, how that school is doing. Academically he is sound and I think wherever he goes he will be fine."
Angela Williams said she is proud of her son.
“Sometimes you feed kids (knowledge) and sometimes they eat and sometimes they don’t,” she said. “I am so proud of him. It is a blessing to have him.
“I was just walking through the school last year to pick him up and the principal walked over and said, ‘I wish I had 36,000 more of kids like him.’
“He listens, he does his homework, he is a respectful young man, he has great moral integrity. He is an exceptional young man, I am very proud to be his mother and the sky is the limit for him both on and off for him.”