Wisconsin basketball recruiting: 2021 5-star guard gets an offer from Greg Gard

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 (or more often since we are in Uncertain Times and there aren’t actual sports going on) 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!

New offer

• 2021 5-star CG Hunter Sallis (Omaha, Neb.) out of Millard North High School announced late Monday night on his Twitter account that the Wisconsin Badgers had finally offered him a scholarship. He has over 20 offers currently but Gonzaga, Nebraska, UCLA, Kansas and Louisville are his five front runners so far according to 247Sports. Joe Krabbenhoft and, as we’ll see later, Chucky Hepburn are Sallis’ lead recruiters.

Standing somewhere between 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-5 (depending on the site) and weighing around 165 pounds, Sallis would be the highest rated recruit for the Badgers in the 2021 class. He is a 247Composite 5-star combo guard and is ranked as the No. 19 player nationally, No. 2 CG and No. 1 player in Nebraska by the Composite. 247’s standalone rankings have him as a 4-star (97 rating) while Rivals has him as a 5-star and the No. 11 player in the country.

Sallis is an electric athlete who can throw down some monster dunks while also embarrassing you off the dribble. He is just plain fun to watch play basketball. He can get to the basket at will and create a layup for himself or feed an open big for an easy layup because the defense surrounded him.

He can finish through contact despite having a slight frame and he’s able to knock down threes and midrange jumpers. Against some of these teams in his highlight video it almost doesn’t seem fair that they have to play against him. He can get to any spot on the court and score from there.

MaxPreps has his stats from last season as 22.2 points per game, 3.8 assists per game, 4.6 rebounds per game and 1.8 steals per game. You may remember that in last season’s Nebraska Class A State Championship, current Wisconsin commit, and close pal of Sallis, Chucky Hepburn and Bellevue West sneaked past Sallis and Millard North 64-62.

While Sallis has a tough offer list to beat, the Badgers have been recruiting him for a while and his close relationship with Hepburn will probably allow Wisconsin to leapfrog some teams that offered him earlier. He has no Crystal Ball predictions on 247Sports so I’d guess that he’s still open to hear from new suitors.