Wisconsin basketball recruiting: Greg Gard offers another 2022 prospect

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

• 2022 unranked wing Braden Huff (Glen Ellyn, Ill.) out of Glenbard West High School announced on Twitter Wednesday night that he had received an offer from the Wisconsin Badgers and Greg Gard. Huff also has offers from Creighton, Northwestern and Virginia Tech. Purdue, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Stanford, among others, have reached out to Huff as well.

The Chicago Sun-Times wrote a glowing profile of Huff back in January about the underrated prospect:

But this much is true: Huff is the best young prospect in Illinois no one knows anything about.

That’s all changing very soon. Huff is among the City/Suburban Hoops Report’s top five prospects in the class. He may just be the next best college prospect in the Class of 2022 behind the No. 1 player in the class, Tinley Park’s AJ Casey.

“His ceiling is as high as it gets,” says Oak Park coach Matt Maloney, who played Glenbard West last week. “He does so much more than you realize, and he’s such a tough guard for us. He shoots over defenders, scores at the rim and is so skilled.”

Huff stands 6-foot-9 and weighs around 200 pounds and plays small forward and power forward for his high school team and the Illinois Wolves, his AAU team. You may remember the Wolves as the team that has produced Badgers players Frank Kaminsky and 2021 commit Chris Hodges.

Huff averaged 15.7 ppg, 7.6 rpg, 2.5 apg and 2.7 bpg during his sophomore campaign, according to his Hudl tape.

The lefty has a sweet shooting stroke from deep and can get to the basket and finish through contact as well. Huff also shows really nice passing instincts and, while this probably won’t be his primary role in college, rim protection.

I don’t know what Wisconsin’s recruiting board for 2022 looks like (sure we do Drew!), but getting in early on Huff like this means he must be near the top of it. Based on that and his AAU team, it’s pretty easy to see the Badgers sticking around in this recruitment until the end.