Wisconsin men’s basketball: Greg Gard discusses upcoming season, Lorne Bowman, 2021 recruiting class

On Wednesday afternoon, Wisconsin Badgers head coach Greg Gard joined a Zoom call with local media to discuss the three members of the 2021 class who had just signed their national letters of intent, how the non-conference scheduling was going for the Badgers, whether or not Lorne Bowman would be rejoining the team this year and who has stood out to him at practice in the freshmen class.

A little over a month ago, the Badgers announced that freshman point guard Lorne Bowman would be taking a leave of absence to attend to a family matter back home in Detroit. We hadn’t heard much about Bowman since until earlier on Wednesday when Jeff Potrykus of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Bowman was no longer in the UW student directory. Potrykus asked Gard about Bowman and Gard confirmed that Bowman had withdrawn from school because the family matter was more serious than initially thought.

Reading between the lines of Gard’s comments it sounded like if Bowman were interested in returning to the team next year he’d be welcomed with open arms, but that is obviously all up in the air. We hope that the Bowman family is healthy and happy moving forward.

Gard seemed pleased with the three new additions to his team from the 2021 class and even mentioned in passing that the coaching staff was still looking for a fourth player in the class. Of note for those of us who care about which positions each player will be listed at:

As far as current freshmen that have impressed him in practice, Gard mentions Steven Crowl, Ben Carlson and Johnny Davis as guys who could see playing time for the team this year.

He also mentioned Official B5Q Favorite Carter Gilmore!

Here are some other notes from Gard’s availability:

• He’s not sure if the Big Ten conference schedule will come out this week, which many people thought previously.

• Gard says that “I hope my phone doesn’t ring for an hour or two” after the daily testing for his players. As mentioned on Twitter, we make a lot of jokes about stuff around here but this season has to be so stressful and agonizing for the players and coaches. It just kinda sucks all around.
• Recruiting for future classes has been tough because no one misses on their Twitter/YouTube highlights. Either they’re all amazing or they have really good editors, Gard says.
• Gard then goes on to discuss how Zoom recruiting is like online dating. If you were wondering if Gard has a preferred online dating app, he doesn’t, as he couldn’t remember the name of any of them.
• Gard says they are planning to play seven non-conference games. All of the non-con game contracts haven’t been returned yet though. He mentioned that the Northern Iowa game, which we talked about yesterday, hasn’t been finalized yet.

• He mentioned that there is a potential arrangement where teams in “a bus region” could substitute within 48 hours to fill in for a canceled non-conference game.