Five-star point guard Deron Rippey Jr. is one of the top targets on Tennessee basketball’s recruiting board this fall. The Vols are battling some of the top programs in the country to land Rippey and they received a small bit of good news Wednesday.
Rippey will no longer officially visit Alabama this weekend as he originally planned according to Rivals’ Joe Tipton. It is uncertain whether Rippey will reschedule his official visit to Tuscaloosa.
A Blairstown, New Jersey native, Rippey ranks as a five-star recruit and the No. 11 player in the 247sports composite rankings. He also ranks as the top point guard in the 2026 recruiting cycle.
Rippey currently has an official visit scheduled to Tennessee from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27 as part of a massive recruiting weekend for Vol hoops. Along with Rippey, five-star forward Christian Collins, five-star wing Bryson Howard, four-star shooting guard Jasiah Jervis and four-star power forward Cody Peck will are all visiting the weekend that Tennessee faces Duke in an exhibition game at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center.
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The five-star recruit originally scheduled double digit official visits for the fall but is starting to whittle some of those visits down. In the last two weeks, Rippey has cancelled official visits to Indiana and Kansas. To this point, Rippey has visited Miami and North Carolina and still has visits scheduled to Texas, Syracuse, Duke and NC State as well as Tennessee.
Rippey is one of Tennessee’s top targets in the 2026 recruiting cycle but certainly is not the only one. Last weekend, Tennessee hosted fellow five-star point guard Miles Sadler on an official visit in Knoxville as the Vols pursue both elite prep guards.
The Vols also have official visits scheduled with four-star forward LaTrell Almond, four-star wing Bo Ogden and four-star wing Manny Green for this fall.
Tennessee has four seniors on its 2025-26 roster but after signing a large prep class a season ago, the Vols likely won’t sign an abundance of prep prospects this cycle.
