Wisconsin football recruiting: is this the start of a hot streak?

On Monday afternoon, 2021 4-star TE Jack Pugh (Hilliard, Ohio) announced on Twitter that he was going to become a Wisconsin Badger. It was big news for the Badgers who had gone over a month without a verbal commitment in the 2021 class while watching rivals Minnesota and Iowa rack up a number of commits.

The Wisconsin Badgers 2021 class is now ranked No. 19 by Rivals and No. 17 by the 247 Composite. One would imagine once Rivals is able to evaluate Pugh properly (he currently is far lower ranked there than anywhere else) both of those rankings will go up. Despite being behind Iowa, Rutgers, Minnesota, Maryland and Penn State in the Composite team rankings, the Badgers have a higher average recruit score than all of them and fewer total recruits verbally committed.

Now that Wisconsin has gotten off the proverbial schneid, is it time for them to go on a hot streak? Badgers recruiting analyst Jensen Gebhardt seems to think so.

Current 2021 3-star ILB commit Jake Chaney also thinks so, tweeting at 3-star EDGE/DE Darryl Peterson and 4-star EDGE/OLB T.J. Bollers who are two top Wisconsin targets that are supposed to be committing in June.

The interactions all week between Pugh, Peterson and Bollers might lead someone to believe that they were/are collaborating on committing together around the same time. Both Bollers and Peterson were quick to comment on Twitter that they were happy for Pugh’s commitment.

They both also commented on Pugh’s announcement that he was, uh, making an announcement after which Pugh commented back on them commenting on his announcement and I’m already confused. But my confusion aside, it is clear that these three guys get along and like each other more than your average recruits do.

The rest of the 2021 class is also jazzed up (topical slang for all you #olds out there) about Pugh’s commitment, especially Pugh’s future quarterback. Riley Mahlman and Bryan Sanborn also retweeted Pugh’s commitment announcement.

Lastly, here is an interesting tidbit from 247 Sports’ Steve Wiltfong’s post about Pugh’s commitment. “Ironically Wisconsin was his dream school for a long time, believe it or not, for basketball,” his father Dan Pugh started in. “He played his first year of football last fall and they came in early and offered and that was a big deal for Jack.”

Pugh wanted to play hoops at Wisconsin and Greg Gard didn’t get him!??! #FIREGARD