This upcoming weekend, the Pitt basketball staff will host a recruit for an official visit for the first time in months.
Isaiah Denis, a class-of-2025 guard prospect will take his official visit to Pitt this upcoming weekend, as he is scheduled to be in town from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1.
Back on Aug. 2, Denis included the Panthers in his top-ten schools’ list, along with the following teams: North Carolina, Kansas, Ohio State, Miami, Mississippi State, Wake Forest, Tennessee, Cincinnati, and Michigan.
Denis is a 6-foot-5 combo guard out of Davidson, North Carolina. At the time that he received his offer from Pitt (just two months ago), Denis was a three-star prospect on 247 Sports who was ranked as the No. 23 combo guard in the class and unranked nationally. Now, he has skyrocketed up recruiting rankings with an elite performance for Team CP3 on the Nike EYBL circuit.
Denis is now ranked as the No. 41 player in the class of 2025 and the No. 8 combo guard, per 247. He has jumped up to four-star status.
“I first was talking to Coach Milan [Brown],” Denis told Pittsburgh Sports Now in an interview months back. “He reached out to me after the live period in Indianapolis for [Nike EYBL] session three. We just started to build that relationship since then, and he told me that they really like my game.”
“He [Brown] can see me coming in for the 2025 class kind of in that Carlton Carrington role,” Denis said. “They felt like I had some similarities to his game. They thought I would be a good piece to come in and kind of fill that type of role that he had.”
Denis continued speaking about the role that Carrington played at Pitt and the role that the Panthers’ saw him playing if he were to commit in the future.
“That’s very important to me because I feel like he [Carrington] played in a certain role where I’m playing right now on my AAU team and my high school team, playing on and off the ball,” Denis said. “Just showing that versatility to do both and be a combo guard which is usually what guards are in the NBA now. Most guards are like combo guards, they are very versatile. Them saying that I can come in and be that type of guy, and I see myself playing that type of way when I get to the college level as well, so that’s big for me.”
Denis also broke down his rise in the recruiting world, shortly after he started to receive a plethora of high-major offers.
“I think it was a long time coming,” he said. “During the high school season, I had a big high school season. Last June, I played in the Peach invitational tournament and picked up some high major interest there. They just didn’t offer. They just built that relationship during the high school season. Mississippi State would text me, Virginia Tech, and more. I knew the Ohio State assistant coach who was at NC State that was recruiting me to go there, until he got the Ohio State job. So it wasn’t like these schools were just calling me out of nowhere, a couple of them I already had a relationship with, they just wanted to see me get out and play after I had a good high school season. They got the head coaches out to see me play in the live period, and once that happened, I had a good showing in the live period and they were ready to offer.”
Denis did not have any official visits locked in at the time of his offer, but he now does. He is scheduled to visit the following schools this fall, in addition to Pitt: North Carolina, Ohio State, Miami, Michigan, and Tennessee (per League Him).
