Wisconsin women’s basketball: UW adding firepower to the roster for next season

The Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team and head coach Jonathan Tsipis have been aggressively improving the roster in Madison this offseason. Over the past three weeks, Wisconsin has added three new players to the locker room that will raise the floor of the team considerably.

The Badgers finished last season 12-19 overall and 3-15 in the B1G, which was good for twelfth in the conference, tied for their best finish during Tsipis’ four year run in Madison. Wisconsin hasn’t made the postseason since the 2010-11 season, so a talent infusion is definitely necessary.

The most recent player to transfer to Wisconsin is 5-foot-11 guard Lexi Duckett from Daytona Beach, Fla. Duckett played her freshman season with the North Carolina Tar Heels, appearing in limited minutes off the bench in 17 games. She was rated as a 3-star guard coming out of high school by ESPN.

Coach Tsipis said: “We are extremely excited to have Lexi Duckett join the Wisconsin Women’s Basketball family as a transfer. We had the good fortune to recruit Lexi as a high school player where she was one of the Top 50 players in the country. Lexi can score in many different ways and is lethal coming off screens and attacking in transition. She will add more athleticism defensively with her length and instincts. Her versatility will be beneficial on both ends of the court.”

Duckett will probably have to sit out a season before suiting up for the Badgers in the 2021-22 season.

Continuing the trend of finding players from all over the ::double checks notes:: world, the Badgers added one last player to their 2020 recruiting class from Gothenburg, Sweden. Lovisa Djurström is a 6-foot-4 forward from the elite RIG Mark Academy in Kinna, Sweden. Djurström was RIG Mark’s second leading scorer and the team’s leading rebounder, shooting 36.7 percent from behind the arc.

Coach Tsipis said: “We are thankful that Lovisa Djurström has decided to join the Wisconsin Women’s Basketball family as a member of the 2020 recruiting class. I was able to see Lovisa play live after the B1G Tournament and saw a skilled post player who can score inside and out. She is a talented passer and has a great wingspan for her size. She has played against older professionals for the last three years and has a great maturity about her. The Kohl Center will have two Swedish student-athletes next season as she joined Linus Weissbach from our Badger Men’s Hockey team.”

Djurström joins Halle Douglass, a 6-foot-2 guard from Lake Forest, Ill.; Brooke Schramek, a 6-foot-2 forward from Benet Academy in Lisle, Ill.; Kate Thompson, a 6-foot-2 forward from Denham Springs, La.; and preferred walk-on Natalie Leuzinger, a 5-foot-7 guard from Black Hawk in the 2020 class.

After going to Florida and Sweden to find the last two players to join the team this offseason, Wisconsin searched a little closer to home for the first transfer. Estella Moschkau, a graduate transfer from the Stanford Cardinal, played her high school ball at Madison Edgewood and will play her final collegiate season in Madison too.

A 6-foot-1 forward, Moschkau was ranked No. 41 nationally and a five-star recruit by ESPN Hoop Gurlz coming out of high school. She holds school records for scoring and rebounding and also won the Wisconsin State Title in 2017. She was named first-team All-State in 2016 and 2017 as well as winning multiple player of the year awards.

She is transferring to Wisconsin as a graduate transfer after completing her Stanford degree in three years. In that time, Moschkau received a Pac-12 All-Academic Honorable Mention as a sophomore and made the Pac-12 Conference Academic Honor Roll for the 2019-2020 season.

She shot almost 58 percent from the field last season, including a team-leading 61.5 percent from the three-point line while appearing in 23 games.

Coach Tsipis said: “We are extremely excited to have Stella joining our Wisconsin Women’s Basketball family as a graduate-transfer for the 2020-21 season. Stella and her parents were the first family I met with in 2016 in our staff’s efforts to keep Wisconsin’s best coming to Madison. She will bring three years of PAC-12 experience and a versatile skill set to our team. She also will help our team with great leadership on and off the court. She grew up watching games in the Kohl Center and now we are ecstatic to welcome her home!”