Deng Ngor’s Rise Started in Alberta. Now He’s Headed to Ohio State

There are certain players you remember watching before everyone knew their name, and Deng Ngor is one of those players for me.

I first saw Deng at the Good Hoops Summer Slam in Edmonton when he was playing 15U with Genesis. What made that weekend even more interesting was that Genesis wasn’t playing against other 15U teams. They were playing up in the 18U division against older, bigger and much more physical players.

Deng wasn’t the star of that team. He was probably the third option, and when I wrote my prospect watch coming out of the tournament, it was his teammate Kade McGeachy who I featured.

I didn’t feature Deng, but I remembered him.

He was long, incredibly athletic and seemed capable of doing a little bit of everything. He could defend, rebound, run the floor and affect the game without needing plays called for him. Against players two and three years older, he wasn’t physically dominating anyone, but he also never looked out of place.

At that age there was still a lot that needed to develop. The handle wasn’t what it is now, the offensive confidence wasn’t there yet and he wasn’t somebody taking over possessions late in games.

Still, the tools were obvious, and I remember thinking he had a chance to become special if he was willing to put the work in.

A little more than two years later, Deng Ngor is committed to Ohio State.

That is a pretty remarkable sentence when I think back to that weekend in Edmonton, but his rise didn’t suddenly begin when the high-major offers arrived or when he eventually moved to Fort Erie International Academy.

It started much earlier.

Deng is from Grande Prairie, Alberta, before basketball eventually took him south to Edge School and Genesis. That part of the story matters because Edge and Genesis were where a lot of the development started happening long before much of the recruiting world knew his name.

The foundation of the player Ohio State is getting was already being built in Alberta.

When I first watched him with Genesis, the athleticism and length jumped out, and over time the rest of the game started catching up.

The handle improved considerably. He became much more comfortable attacking off the bounce and operating on the perimeter. His confidence grew with it, and so did his willingness to impose himself on a game.

But the biggest thing is that Deng never moved away from what made him interesting in the first place.

Everything still starts with defence, and the bigger the game gets, the more he seems to rely on it.

His length and motor are, in my opinion, as good as anyone in the country. Deng covers an incredible amount of ground defensively, gets into passing lanes, can switch across different types of players and creates possessions simply through activity.

That was there when he was 15.

What’s different now is what happens after the defensive play.

He’s more comfortable putting the ball on the floor, stronger going downhill and capable of turning a steal or rebound into offence himself. The confidence to make a big shot has started catching up to everything else, which is why I don’t really look at Deng today and see a completely different player. I see a much more complete version of the same one.

That progression became impossible to ignore at the 2025 Canada Summer Games.

By then, Deng wasn’t a third option anymore. Alberta had plenty of talent, but as the tournament went along it became obvious that whenever the game reached an important moment, Deng seemed to find his way into it.

That was why we named him our Maple Minute MVP. It wasn’t simply because he led Alberta in scoring and rebounding. It was because every time Alberta needed something, Deng found a way to provide it.

Sometimes it was scoring. Sometimes it was a defensive stop, a rebound, a deflection or a play in transition. He had reached the point where he could impact so many different areas that even when one part of his game wasn’t working, he could still change the game somewhere else.

He lived up to the hype and delivered in every big moment.

Against Ontario in pool play, Deng finished with 23 points, nine rebounds and six assists. Then, in the championship game, Alberta defeated Ontario 72-69 to capture the first men’s basketball gold medal in the province’s Canada Games history, with Deng leading everyone with 22 points.

That tournament was probably the moment when the potential I had seen a couple years earlier became something much more real.

Then this summer, he did it again, only this time the stage was even bigger.

Canada reached the U18 AmeriCup championship game against the United States. The Americans had dominated the event historically and Canada had never won it, but once again Deng found himself in the middle of the biggest moments.

Canada trailed 65-62 with less than two minutes remaining when Deng stepped into a corner three and tied the game. Canada forced a turnover on the next defensive possession, Deng sprinted the floor and finished with a huge dunk to put Canada ahead 67-65.

Those ended up being Canada’s final five points of the game. A three to tie it and a dunk to take the lead, both in the closing minutes against the United States with a gold medal on the line.

For me, that sequence was almost a perfect snapshot of how Deng has developed. The bigger the game gets, the more he trusts his defence and his motor. He doesn’t suddenly try to become a different player because the moment is bigger. He competes, gets stops, runs the floor and finds ways to affect possessions.

What has changed is that he now has enough confidence offensively to take the three when his team needs it.

Deng finished that championship game with 15 points and three steals on 5-of-8 shooting, helping Canada capture its first U18 AmeriCup title. The stat line was good, but the moment was better.

There are a lot of talented prospects who look great when everything is going their way. Deng has increasingly shown an ability to matter when the game becomes uncomfortable, and that is what keeps standing out to me.

It was there at the Canada Games, and we saw it again against the United States. The stage keeps getting bigger and he keeps finding another way to impact the game.

There is another part of Deng’s story that doesn’t show up in a box score, and that is how people around him talk about him.

Former teammates rave about him. Parents who have had Deng come through their basketball ecosystem still want to support him and help him. People who knew him before the rankings changed and before the major college offers arrived continue to speak highly of him.

That matters because Western Canadian basketball can become a pretty small community. Players move between programs, families spend weekends together in gyms and coaches remember the kids who come through their programs.

Deng has left a lot of people in his corner. He’s well spoken and down to earth, and from everything I have seen and heard, that hasn’t changed as his profile has exploded.

The basketball world around him certainly has. The offers got bigger, the national attention grew and eventually programs like Duke, Florida, Washington and Ohio State were involved.

But it is important not to rewrite the story and make it seem like Deng suddenly became a prospect after leaving Alberta. He didn’t.

Grande Prairie is where the story started. Edge and Genesis were where I first watched the pieces begin coming together, and by the time Deng moved to Fort Erie, he had already established himself as one of the top young players coming out of Alberta.

Fort Erie gave him another stage, but it didn’t create the player. Now Ohio State gets the next version of him.

There are still areas that have to develop. The jumper needs to continue becoming more consistent, and while his handle has improved dramatically from the player I watched at 15U, there is another level required to create consistently against Big Ten athletes.

He’ll also need to keep getting stronger without losing the mobility and motor that have always made him different. But when I look at Deng, those aren’t the things that interest me most. It’s the direction he keeps moving.

I first watched him as a 15U third option playing against 18-year-olds and thought he had a chance. Then I watched him become the player who seemed to make every important play for Alberta at the Canada Games. This summer, I watched him step into a huge three and follow it with a go-ahead dunk against the United States in the closing minutes of a gold-medal game.

Now he’s headed to Ohio State.

The athleticism, length and motor that caught my attention in Edmonton are still the foundation of his game. What’s changed is how much skill, confidence and responsibility he has added around them.

Deng believes he can impact the game now, and more importantly, when the game gets big, he has started proving that belief is justified. That’s why Ohio State doesn’t feel like the end of this rise. It feels like the next test.

I watched Deng Ngor as a 15U third option playing up against 18-year-olds in an Edmonton gym. Today, he’s an Ohio State commit, a Canada Games champion, a U18 AmeriCup champion and one of the most intriguing prospects in Canadian basketball.