Former Prized Kentucky Recruit is Wyoming Bound
LARAMIE -- Allan Houston. Rex Chapman. Darrell Griffith. Wes Unseld.
Not only did all of those names above become first round NBA Draft selections, they were once upon a time named Mr. Basketball in the state of Kentucky.
So was Wyoming's latest commit, Dontaie Allen, the 13th and final pickup in the 2024-25 class for new head coach Sundance Wicks.
Allen, who originally inked with the Kentucky Wildcats out of Pendleton County High School in Falmouth, spent the previous two seasons at Western Kentucky, helping lead the Hilltoppers to a berth in the NCAA Tournament last March.
He has just one season of eligibility remaining.
Allen joins fellow guards AJ Wills (Holy Cross) Obi Agbim (Fort Lewis) and Jordan Nesbitt (Hampton), along with center Scottie Ebube (Southern Illinois) and forwards Aboubacar "Abou" Magassa (Saint Louis) and Cole Henry (Northern Iowa) in this new-look lineup.
Former Wyoming head coach Jeff Linder added forwards Matija Belic (UC Santa Barbara) and Touko Tainamo (Denver) before bolting last month to accept an assistant coaching position at Texas Tech. These new faces will join holdovers Kobe Newton, Nigle Cook and Oleg Kojenets on the Cowboys roster.
Allen, a 6-foot-6, 210-pound guard, shot 40.5% from the floor and averaged 8.2 points per game while leading WKU to a Conference USA tournament championship. Allen also connected on a career-high 40% (56-of-140) of his shots from beyond the arc.
Eleven times Allen reached double digits in scoring last season, including a 30-point outburst in a 105-91 victory over Florida International. That night he went 9-of-11 from the floor, drilling 5-of-7 from deep. He also hit all seven of his free-throw attempts.
Allen started 13 of the Hilltoppers' 33 games.
At UK, he started just once and appeared in 41 outings. Allen averaged 5.4 points a night as a redshirt freshman in Lexington, scoring a then career-best 23 points two separate times. Ironically, both came against Mississippi State, including splashing six three-pointers in the opening round of the SEC Tournament.
Allen received interest from all the heavy hitters out of high school: Louisville, Tennessee, Purdue, Clemson, Florida and Auburn, among many others. He eventually decided to stay home and join John Calipari's Wildcats where he would sit out his first season while still recovering from a torn ACL.
Then a four-star prospect, Allen was the lone in-state product in the second-ranked recruiting class in the country, according to 247sports. Despite playing in just 13 games as a senior, Allen capped his prep career with 3,255 points, 11th most in the state's history. He was averaging an eye-popping 42.9 points per game before that left knee injury cost him the remainder of his senior season.
Allen became the 18th Mr. Basketball to sign with UK.
UW: University of Wyoming Cowboys’ Greatest Games From the First Decade of the 2000’s
More From 7220 Sports
