Wisconsin basketball recruiting: EWU transfer big man Tanner Groves has been contacted by UW

With the news that senior guard Brad Davison will be returning to the Wisconsin Badgers men’s hoops team next year there are two more slots available for scholarship players in the transfer portal. Since both Micah Potter and Nate Reuvers have moved on it would be highly likely that Greg Gard would be interested in a big man.

A name that popped up earlier this week is former Eastern Washington forward Tanner Groves.

While Groves notes in his tweet that not every team he has in the picture has offered, every team pictured has been in contact with him. Schools like UNC, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma have reached out so you know this will be a heated recruitment.

You may remember Groves from the most recent NCAA Tournament where he dropped a career-high 35 points on Kansas’ head in EWU’s upset bid that fell just short. His teammate and younger brother, Jacob, is also in the transfer portal and it makes you wonder if they are a package deal. With Wisconsin’s two remaining scholarships, it would almost be a perfect fit.

Tanner is a 6-foot-9 and 235 pound redshirt junior forward who would definitely fill a need for the Badgers. In his first season as a starter the reigning Big Sky Conference MVP averaged 17.2 ppg, 8.0 rpg and 1.1 bpg while shooting 56% from the field, 34.9% from three on 63 attempts and 77.8% from the charity stripe.

The native of Spokane, Wash. drew almost six fouls per game and had the No. 85 best two-point shooting percentage (62.9%) in the nation. He was a high usage/high efficiency player for the Eagles last year and would help immensely with the development of young UW big men Ben Carlson, Steven Crowl and Chris Hodges.