Wisconsin recruiting: two more football offers sent out

Recruiting is the lifeblood of any major college athletics team, but following it closely as a fan can sometimes be difficult and can often be time consuming. We’ll try and condense all the recruiting news you can use into this bi-weekly post. It’ll include updates on current commits, including stats from their high school games, as well as news on players the Badgers are still pursuing. Let’s get down to business!

Football offers

• The Badgers handed out a couple of football offers over the past week. The most recent one is to 2021 3-star WR Titus Mokiao-Atimalala of James Campbell High School (Ewa Beach, Hawaii).

247 Sports has him rated as the No. 60 WR in the class and the No. 3 player in the state of Hawaii. Mokiao-Atimalala has offers from Cal, Michigan, Hawaii, Oregon State and Utah to go along with his Badgers offer.

The Badgers have one commit for the 2020 class from Hawaii, 4-star LB Nick Herbig, who will probably be instrumental in the future recruitment of Mokiao-Atimalala as the transition from the islands to Madison is, well, a difficult one.

The junior wideout caught 58 passes for 1,079 yards and 16 scores while also contributing five interceptions (three returned for scores) on the defensive side of the ball. Mokiao-Atimalala shows good instincts and ball skills on defense, including winning a few jump balls, which should translate to offense as well.

When asked to run routes, and not just run by people which he is capable of doing, they look crisper than most high schoolers. He’ll still have things to polish but there is a high baseline of talent here.

• The first player that Wisconsin offered this week is 2021 4-star DE Cade Denhoff out of Lakeland Christian High School (Lakeland, Fla.). Denhoff is rated as the No. 137 player in the country by the 247 Composite. 247 Sports is particularly high on him, rating him as the No. 47 player in the land.

The 6-foot-5 and 225 pound DE has offers from just about every good team out there. Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, LSU, Penn State, Nebraska and Virginia are the ones who are highest on his list. But Michigan, Notre Dame, Florida, Florida State, Miami (Fla.), Louisville, UCF and a whole host of other schools have also offered him.

Wisconsin will have to do a lot of work to get their name near the top of his list, but for a player this talented it is worth it. What I, a known brilliant talent evaluator, noticed from his junior year tape is how quick off the line of scrimmage he is. He’s also relentless, often fighting through multiple block attempts before making a tackle.

I don’t think the Badgers will sign him, but he is the caliber of player that Wisconsin will need to continue to offer and eventually sign if they want to take the next step as a program.

More football commits win awards

• It is award season and the state of Wisconsin has been handing them out this past week. There were a number of senior class awards that were given out and all of them, except one, went to a Wisconsin commit.

Here are the tweets, with corresponding articles about the award that I won’t bother reciting for you.

Obviously, Davis is coming to Wisconsin to play basketball but the Badgers have had pretty good luck with former quarterbacks so this is nice to see.

• The Badgers lone commit from Illinois made the all-state team. Congrats, Dylan Barrett!

Wisconsin high school basketball preseason all-state announced

• With high school football coming to an end, it is time to get excited for high school hoops season to start! Mark Miller released his preseason all-state teams and there are future Badgers on two of the three teams.

The more I read about Carter Gilmore, who accepted a PWO offer to come to Madison, the more I think the Badgers are getting an absolute steal.

The Davis twins are on the Division 2 list as well as Monroe’s Cade Meyer, a bouncy wing, who doesn’t have a Wisconsin offer yet, but would probably accept one if Greg Gard gives it to him.

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s younger brother Alex will look to have a big senior year and potentially get some high major offers, which he doesn’t have yet.

Football visitors for Purdue game

• 2022 4-star S Braelon Allen (Fond du Lac) is coming back to Madison for the third time this year. There is much speculation that he will receive an offer before he leaves town. Right now, Allen is being recruited hard by the Badgers, Iowa and Notre Dame.

• 2021 5-star OT Nolan Rucci (Lititz, Pa.) will be in Madison for the Purdue game as well. He is the younger brother of current Wisconsin tight end Hayden Rucci and a highly sought after talent. His top-four, it would appear, are Wisconsin, Michigan, Notre Dame and Penn State, with the Nittany Lions seeming to be the team to beat.

• The only other visitor I could find is unranked 2021 LB Ahmad Walker (Warner Robins, Ga.). He has offers from Akron and Charlotte but schools like South Carolina and Georgia Tech are also interested.