Hockey Recruiting: Tim Davison spurns USHL

In our Monday afternoon recruiting recap we broke down the five known Wisconsin men's hockey recruits that have given their verbal pledge to Mike Eaves and company and where they will be playing hockey next season. The only player that we were still unsure on was defense recruit Tim Davison who was making the decision between returning to (Green Bay) Notre Dame Academy for his senior season and playing for Team Wisconsin before and after the high school season or to make the jump to the USHL with the Chicago Steel who recently traded for his rights from Youngstown.

Tim was kind enough to let Bucky's 5th Quarter know of his decision on Tuesday simply stating, "I'll be playing Team Wisconsin and Notre Dame (Academy)." Davison's arrival in Madison has yet to be determined and he's currently listed as a 2012 or 2013 recruit. The Badgers are expected to lose Eric Springer to graduation and Justin Schultz to the NHL after this season. Davison is currently the only committed defense recruit at this time although the Badgers are still in hot pursuit of Burnsville, Minnesota blueliner Eddie Wittchow who turned down an opportunity to come and play for Wisconsin this season. Wittchow will spend 2011-12 playing for the Waterloo Black Hawks (USHL).

An additional recruiting note, similar to what we did when the Sixty Minutes site was still operational, I will be keeping track of Wisconsin men's hockey recruit statistics throughout next season. I've set up the template which you can see after the jump and will be adding a link to the sidebar of the main page on Bucky's 5th Quarter shortly.

Update, added some quotes from Davison after the jump as well.

Wes Hodkiewicz from the Green Bay Press-Gazette wrote a fantastic article with quotes from Davison and his head coach at Notre Dame Academy that I hope he won't mind I'm going to share here. This is what the future Badger had to say about his decision to return for his senior season.

"It was very difficult decision with Chicago being a lot closer than Youngstown was," said Davison. "I liked Chicago a lot, the coach seemed like a great guy and being closer made it so much harder to decide."

And his head coach Cory McCracken from Notre Dame Academy.

"We use Max (McCormick) a lot as an example, not only in our program, but with Team Wisconsin that they don't hand out trophies for being the first kid into the USHL," Notre Dame coach Cory McCracken said.

"It's certainly good to get the pat on the back, play for a year and move on if your ability and skill set is pushed to the point where you can help a college program and contribute to a college program.

"But there's no rush to get where he's going. The University of Wisconsin is going to still be there no matter if he gets there two years from now, three years from now or even next year, who knows?"