Recruiting Roundup: Human Highlight Reel Hamidou Diallo Has Everyone Buzzing

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — President Barack Obama was away on presidential business when Hamidou Diallo's Amateur Athletic Union team was invited to play basketball at the White House, but if he had been there, rest assured the commander in chief would have gotten dunked on.

"Definitely," Diallo said.

Diallo, the No. 7-ranked player in the 2017 recruiting class, has built a reputation for his dunks, which explode from his skinny 6'5" frame like firecrackers with short fuses.

He has become something of a walking YouTube channel, and he punctuated day one of the Team USA U18 trials in Colorado Springs last week with a one-handed flush that illustrated what college recruiters already know: Diallo is on a different level, athletically speaking.

Because of this, he has recently become a star with all the accompanying scrutiny.

Earlier in the spring, Diallo was asked about the content of the recruiting pitches he's received from Kentucky and Duke. His answer, per Kyle Tucker of the Courier-Journal, made national headlines:

"

Kentucky's pitch was just the NBA thing. Duke's pitch was if you come to Duke, you're going to be set for life. It's more than just basketball. (Kentucky coach John Calipari's) pitch was he gets guys ready for the next level. Look at the numbers—it shows. It's the best place for you if you want to make it to the NBA.

Both pitches are appealing. It's just a hard decision. I've got a lot of schools recruiting me, a bunch of schools capable of taking me to the NBA.

"

Calipari didn't like hearing that and wrote up a blog ostensibly criticizing Duke's recruiting pitch while invoking the "teach a man to fish" ethic:

"

I refuse to go in a home and paint a picture saying things like, "If you come with us you'll be taken care of for the rest of your life by the program and by our alums," even though you may only be in school for a year or two. How preposterous does that sound? What if I say that same thing and the young man decides to transfer for one reason or another? Does that still hold true that we're going to take care of them for the rest of their lives? Our approach is to give them the fishing rod and the lures to help them catch fish, not to just give you the fish.

"

Thus began one of those internet flame wars that can flare up over this sort of thing.

These things are at least as old as the internet itself, but if there's one thing that will really torque off a college basketball coach, it's the idea that a competing school would explicitly (or implicitly) talk bad about his school during the course of a recruiting pitch. It is sometimes called negative recruiting, and it is the contaminating agent in a lot of bad blood on the recruiting trail.

Diallo, on the other hand, was just a teenager answering a question.

"I was a little surprised," Diallo said. "I honestly don't know how it got that big, but it got big out of nowhere."

The New York Rens, Diallo's AAU team, are well known for wearing orange patches on their sleeves to raise awareness about youth gun violence. In a one-year period between 2014 and 2015, four members of the Rens had been involved in gun violence—two as shooting victims, two as alleged shooters.

Their message, they say, is not about gun rights. It's just about keeping weapons out of the hands of kids.

"One of our young guys on our younger team got shot," Diallo said. "That kid had a bright future. We're lucky he's back on the court and back to 100 percent now. I grew up in the inner city, so it's a lot of gun violence around. I just try to play basketball and get away from all that."

This was the reason for the White House visit earlier this month. The Rens were being honored for their activism and got to play basketball on the White House court.

And it was a good thing President Obama didn't show up that day, because if Diallo had had anything to say about it, the president would have wound up in a Vine loop.

"I try to dunk on anybody that's on the court," Diallo said.

Austin Wiley's Knees Are Getting Better

It would be a stretch to say 5-star big man Austin Wiley was as good as new during the Team USA U17 tryouts in Colorado Springs last week. But the knee injury that forced him out of Team USA play last year had come along far enough that, with plenty of treatment, Wiley made the team.

"It's a blessing, because I know how hard I worked," Wiley said. "It makes it that much sweeter."

Wiley, a 6'10" Auburn commitment, wears braces on both knees, though the problem was only with his left, which required a surgical repair on the patellar tendon and sidelined him for most of last summer.

In terms of explosiveness, Wiley said he is at about 80-90 percent.

"Getting better," Wiley said. "A little sore, but I'm getting proper treatment."

Though Wiley appeared to move with a certain gingerliness during the Team USA tryouts, he was nonetheless a virtual lock to make the team and help anchor a front line that includes fellow 5-star forward Wendell Carter.

Nojel Eastern Is a Private Poet

As the No. 61-ranked overall player in the 2017 class, Evanston, Illinois, shooting guard Nojel Eastern harbors an unusual interest for a 21st-century basketball player.

"I just like to put rhymes together," said Eastern, who made it past the first round of cuts but did not make the final U17 roster. "It just came to me naturally."

He's not talking about rapping but about poetry.

"I don't rap," he said.

As a youngster, Eastern found he liked coming up with rhymes, and poetry was an outlet for him.

"Sometimes drawing comes to people naturally," he said. "That's what happened to me (with poetry). I just started writing stuff, trying to be unique."

None of Eastern's poems get published anywhere. That isn't the point for him. He isn't trying to be a poet and doesn't really think of himself as an artist. He just likes the words.

"I just write for myself," he said.

Bamba Sidelined by Foot

Kelly Kline/Getty Images

Mohamed Bamba—he of the infamous 7'8" wingspan—made the U18 team's final cut despite missing much of training camp with a foot injury.

"It was really bad in the spring," Bamba said.

He is expected to be at full strength in about two weeks. A 6'11" center from New York, Bamba is the No. 2-ranked player in the 2017 class.

Who Showed Out?

Between the U18 and U17 tryouts, there were about 50 of the country's top juniors and seniors vying for roster spots, though none with more verve than Diallo. He is not the country's most polished perimeter player, but compared to most of his peers, he is so athletic that it doesn't make much difference.

No surprise, here, but Carter dominated the paint during the U17 team's scrimmages. The only other U17 big man at the tryouts who could match Carter's length and strength would maybe have been a healthy Wiley, though he is not all the way recovered from knee surgery.

It will be a surprise if Markus Howard id not the team's starting point guard. Howard, who graduated high school a year early to hurry up and get to Marquette, is a coach-on-the-floor type who led the state of Arizona in scoring in 2014-15.

Though he didn't ultimately make the roster, Jalen Smith showed great timing and length as a rim protector. It wouldn't have been a surprise to see Team USA assistant coach Mark Turgeon keep Smith around—he's recruiting him to Maryland, according to Don Markus of the Baltimore Sun.

Unless otherwise noted, recruiting ratings and rankings courtesy of 247Sports.

Tully Corcoran covers college basketball for Bleacher Report.