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The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team are still looking for one final piece to round out their 2021 recruiting class. One of their top targets, 3-star SG Julian Roper (Franklin, Mich.), will be announcing his college decision on Monday afternoon May 4th.
Announcement Monday @ 1:50 on IG @juroperii
— Ju Roper (@JuRoper) May 2, 2020
Presumably, since Roper lives in Michigan, that is 1:50 p.m. EST (which would mean the announcement will be made at 12:50 p.m. CST if you are my wife and don’t understand how time zones work).
According to both 247Sports and Rivals, Roper is down to a final two schools: Wisconsin and the Northwestern Wildcats. For a long time the Badgers were considered the favorite (as you can read in our post from a few weeks ago) to land Roper, but this past week predictions on both recruiting websites suddenly changed to Northwestern. Roper was a high school teammate of 2020 Wisconsin PG commit Lorne Bowman, so it was the common thought that he’d follow Bowman to Madison.
As noted here, a 247 insider made a crystal ball prediction for three-star guard Julian Roper to Northwestern today.
— Ella Brockway (@ellabrockway) May 1, 2020
Roper is set to announce his decision on Monday — he would be the first addition to what the Wildcats hope is a big 2021 class. https://t.co/OjZA5gB5OM
The Badgers offered another shooting guard in the 2021 class, Isaiah Barnes out of Oak Park, Ill., a couple of weeks ago and there was speculation that it might have been to put a little bit of pressure on Roper to either shit or get off the pot, as the official recruiting saying goes.
We don’t know if the offer had that effect on Roper, or his decision timeline, but since then he announced what day he was committing and also a lot of chatter about him going to Northwestern appeared.
We’ll have his decision for you right here on B5Q on Monday afternoon.