Wisconsin basketball recruiting: top 2023 prospect receives an offer from UW

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

• 2023 big man Gus Yalden (De Pere) who will be attending, and playing hoops for, the Asheville School in North Carolina this coming season received an offer from Greg Gard and the Wisconsin Badgers on Friday. Yalden, who has been blowing up this week, received an offer from Auburn a few hours after Wisconsin offered and he also has Florida State, Maryland, Nebraska, Rutgers, Utah, West Virginia and Winthrop offers on the table.

Already standing at 6-foot-10 and weighing a bit over 200 pounds, Yalden is a prototypical modern big man. He can shoot from three, he can back you down in the paint and he can handle the rock too. B5Q spoke with Yalden on Friday and he said his strengths were “I can bang on the low block and use my size to carve out space and different moves to score and then I can shoot the three off pick and pop and also I think I see the floor well and am always looking to pass for the easy bucket on cuts or transition.”

Yalden has already had a pretty interesting high school career insofar as he’s a Wisconsin native, played his freshman year in California at Mater Dei and now he’s going to play his sophomore season at the Asheville School in North Carolina all while still playing grassroots ball in Wisconsin this summer. Yalden grew up cheering for the Badgers and always wanted an offer from them.

“Coach Gard just wanted to be sure I knew that they considered me a Wisconsin kid and one of their own regardless of where I go to school and that he didn’t want there to be any question of the level of interest they had so pretty much he was going to seal it with a scholarship offer.”

Yalden’s ability to play inside and outside fits with the positionless style of basketball that is popular currently as well as the swing concepts that the Badgers have been using for years. “Both [Gard] and Coach Krabbenhoft talked about me not fitting in a box and positionless basketball and how I fit in really well with what they do at Wisconsin. Both like the feel of my game and where they think I’m going to be in three years with skill and development,” Yalden told us.

This coming season Yalden has a few goals he’d like to accomplish in North Carolina, “for high school get good grades, represent The Asheville School team and community the best that I can, work on my body, speed and quickness so that hopefully I have the chance to compete for a state championship.”