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Inside The Huskies

Huskies Make First Cut for Nation's No. 1 2026 Center

Arafan Diane has pared his 24 offers down to a dozen, and the UW remains in contention.
Dan Raley|
Arafan Diane meets with Houston coach Kelvin Sampson.
Arafan Diane meets with Houston coach Kelvin Sampson. | Diane

Almost anything Arafan Diane does is big news.

For starters, he's a 7-foot-1, 250-pounder from Des Moines, Iowa, by way of Montreal, Quebec, and originally from the West African country of Guinea.

Diane is considered the No. 1 basketball center in the United States' college ranks for the Class of 2026.

He holds 24 offers, but has pared that list in half, to a dozen schools -- with the University of Washington among those making the initial cut for this well-traveled player.

Normally dropping down to 12 schools doesn't really move the needle much on deciding on a college basketball decision or drawing headlines.

Yet everything about Diane says program anchor who can turn a team into a championship caliber contender.

The beat goes on with Sprinkle's recruiters no doubt putting in daily calls to the native African and trying to get a Montlake visit out of him.

So far, Diane has set up campus trips to Arkansas on Sept. 12-14, to Kentucky on Sept. 26-27 and to Houston on Oct. 9-12.

Other schools still in the running for him are Connecticut, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Kansas, Louisville,. Oregon, Purdue and Virginia.

Programs that were among those eliminated were home state Iowa, Arizona, BYU, Creighton and defending national champion Florida.

Diane currently plays for Iowa United Prep and last year took part with Guinea in the FIBA U17 World Cup in which he averaged 19.1 points and 11.7 rebounds over seven games in Turkey.

The big man told Hoops HQ how he was just 12 when he went to buy a soccer ball at an African market and encountered Souleymane Kasse, an assistant coach for Guinea's national team.

Kasse convinced him, with his long legs and arms, to pursue basketball rather than his original sporting option.

He helped direct Diane to Montreal and then to Iowa United Prep, with the latter open to welcoming African players into its program.

Diane is an intelligent player, picking up things rather quickly especially after going through a growth spurt.

He also speaks five languages, with French the official dialect for Guinea. Communication skills are a big part of who he is.

“I’m feeling good,” Diane told Hoops HQ this summer. “I’m pushing my team in winning every single day. This is a good opportunity. Most people don’t have this opportunity. I’m African. That’s different.

"I need to come in with a good mentality because you don’t have a mom [in America], you don’t have any dad, you don’t have nothing. You need a strong mentality.”

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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