Providence Lands Commitment From Former G-League Ignite Guard Dink Pate

The Friars have made a provocative addition to their team.

Dink Pate played in the NBA’s Rising Stars Challenge in 2025. | Kyle Terada-Imagn Images

Guard Dink Pate appears set to become the latest basketball player to experience the start of his career out of order.

Pate—a 16 point-per-game scorer for the Westchester Knicks in the G-League this season—is committing to play for Providence in the coming college basketball season, his agent told Jeff Borzello of ESPN Thursday evening.

A native of Dallas, Pate joined G-League Ignite—the NBA’s ill-fated attempt at a collegiate alternative—in the spring of 2023. Much was made at the time of the fact that he was the youngest known professional basketball player in the history of the United States, as well as the fact that he turned down offers from Alabama and Arkansas.

A look at Pate’s G-League journey

Pate played for G-League Ignite in the final year of its existence, at which point the money in college basketball was booming at full throttle while the Ignite experiment was beginning to be regarded as a failure. He averaged eight points per game in 20 starts, but the team went 2-32.

Denied entry into the 2024 draft, Pate played for the Mexico City Capitanes in 2025, averaging 10.1 points (although his advanced metrics remained dodgy). Still, he was selected to play in the `25 NBA Rising Stars Challenge, and he even scored five points in the final for Team G-League.

In 2026, Pate moved to the Westchester Knicks, where he averaged a career-best 16 points per game to go with 6.6 rebounds and 3.7 assists.

Pate will probe the boundaries of eligibility—but he’ll have a crucial point in his favor

Pate “turned down two-way and 10-day opportunities to maintain eligibility,” Borzello wrote.

That’s important, because it separates Pate from a few recent players who have attempted to bend the traditional rules of college eligibility. Center James Nnaji played 18 games for Baylor this season amid much public pushback, in part because he had played in the NBA Summer League after being drafted 31st by the Pistons in `23. Center Charles Bediako, who played five games for the Crimson Tide, signed a two-way contract with the Spurs.

Pate, who’s still just 20, seems to have the outline of a winning eligibility case.

Meanwhile, new Friars coach Bryan Hodgson scores a second coup

Providence hired the 38-year-old Hodgson away from South Florida on March 22, betting that he could revive the Friars, who haven’t made the men’s tournament since coach Ed Cooley’s last season in `23.

So far, so good. On Thursday, Hodgson landed a transfer commitment from ex-San Diego State guard Miles Byrd—a two-time All-Mountain West performer who was the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year in `26. Now, it appears Pate will follow.

Hodgson—a member of Alabama coach Nate Oats’s coaching tree, which could conceivably explain his willingness to prod at rules and regulations—has never won fewer than 20 games as a head coach. He won two CBI games in `24, the Sun Belt regular-season title and an NIT game in `25, and took the Bulls to the NCAA tournament in `26.

The last coach to take Providence to the NCAA tournament in his first season? That’d be Rick Barnes in 1989.

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