Donovan clingan7/14/2023 When I saw him I was like, ‘This kid is about it.'” We were fighting over everything, so it was definitely good for him. “He was good, he wanted it so bad he was like, ‘I’m about to kill, I’m about to kill.’ I’m like ‘Bro, chill out…’ He came in and you could see that he wanted it so bad, he wanted to play. “He was acting like he was a big dog, I’m like, ‘Donovan, relax,’ Sanogo continued, chuckling. “He thought he was a big dog when he first got here,” said Adama Sanogo, UConn’s starting center who was the preseason Big East Player of the Year and held the spot Clingan so coveted. He later even had to get stitches at least once during the season. “And by the time he got to us in June, after his graduation, he had done all of the heavy lifting by himself in terms of getting in shape – he really did, it wasn’t us.ĭuring the Huskies’ summer sessions, Clingan often left the facility with bruises, scrapes, black eyes. “It looked like he was gaining some bad weight, negative weight type of thing, but to his credit, and to Tim Barrette’s credit, the head coach, that senior year he was up every morning early and he worked out quite a bit,” Moore said. As time flew during the pandemic, Clingan was 17, 18, and couldn’t work out as much, couldn’t travel for AAU tournaments. He wasn’t the 14- or 15-year-old whose viral clips circulated the internet anymore. He still earned the Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year honor, his first of two, but his body was changing. As he towered over his opponents, his teammates and dominated Connecticut high school basketball, the UConn men’s basketball program knew it needed to land the state’s top recruit.īut by the end of that Covid-abbreviated 2020-21 season, in which the 7-foot-2 Clingan had to play with a mask, he had put on some weight during the pandemic. HOUSTON -– Near the end of Donovan Clingan’s junior year at Bristol Central high school, UConn assistant Tom Moore started to get nervous.Ĭlingan was Moore’s top priority.
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