DePaul Prep guard Rykan Woo is a thoughtful kid who spends a few seconds ruminating before he answers a question. But the Brown recruit didn’t pause at all when asked what fans should expect this season from his teammate Rashaun Porter.
Woo and Porter are key players for the Rams, the top-ranked team in the preseason Super 25 rankings.
“The only word to describe it is dominant,” Woo said. “He’s going to dominate. He’s a great player and a great person. The best thing about him is he’s really smart. He does the right things to win. That’s going to be showcased this year.”
Porter, a 6-7 Toledo recruit, played with an enticing blend of skill and violence while leading the Rams to the Pontiac Holiday Tournament title and the Class 3A state championship last season.
“[At Pontiac] I started to figure out my role,” Porter said. “It was a new style we were playing and a huge change. I had to understand that and step up more.”
Porter, who was born on the West Side and moved to Hillside in third grade, slimmed down and worked on his guard skills over the summer.
“He’s our catalyst,” DePaul coach Tom Kleinschmidt said. “We go how he goes. When he’s vocal in practice, it raises our whole team.”
Six-foot-seven kids are occasionally pushed into playing basketball. That’s not the case with Porter.
“Basketball has always been important to me, Porter said. “It’s always been the way for me to clear my mind and find success. I value it and work hard in it. And that’s what I found in DePaul, a place where I could do that and ultimately be myself.”
Porter’s first visit to DePaul Prep for a high school basketball game is a core memory.
“There was so much energy,” Porter said. “It was Iggy vs. DePaul on grade school night. Everyone was screaming and yelling. It was hard for me to hear the person right next to me. I could imagine myself on the court, going up for a dunk in the middle of all that.”
Woo and Porter are the headliners, but DePaul Prep has a tall, talented team surrounding them.
“I like to play four guards and a big, so it will be an adjustment,” Kleinschmidt said. “This is the biggest team we’ve had. We will go 6-8, and 6-5, so that is pretty long.”
Senior guard AJ Chambers, a Michigan Tech recruit, made significant strides over the summer.
“He’s a playmaker, a powerful point guard that gets guys the ball,” Kleinschmidt said. “His footwork is unbelievable. He plays his gaps on defense and gets big steals.”
Sophomore Blake Choice, a 6-2 guard, senior guard Pat Lovell and 6-8 junior Gus Johnson will have bigger roles this season. And the Rams picked up a major addition in Sacred Heart-Griffin transfer Zion Lee, a 6-5 senior.
“[Lee] is a freak athlete,” Woo said. “He’s huge, really strong and really physical. He sets great screens and he’s a great scorer. My favorite part of his game is his midrange. It’s tough to stop that when he’s 6-5.”
Woo plays with an understated flair when things are flowing, and he has been a fan favorite for several years. He started and ended last season well, but spent a stretch of the season adjusting to being a marked man.
“There were highs and lows,” Woo said. “Teams didn’t know me at the start, but as the season went on, I was struggling with being face-guarded and teams centering the defense around me.”
DePaul Prep won the Class 2A state title in 2023 and the Class 3A state titles in 2024 and 2025. The Rams are up in Class 4A this season and attempting a four-peat. Last season, they won their seven Class 3A playoff games by an average margin of 28 points.
“The playoffs are going to be vastly different,” Kleinschmidt said. “We understand that.”
DePaul Prep plays a challenging schedule and will take on Indiana’s La Lumiere, the prep school that former Kenwood star Devin Cleveland transferred to, at the Chicago Elite Classic on Dec. 6.