Wisconsin basketball recruiting: still searching for a transfer big man

The transfer portal has been a pretty wild place this offseason. The Wisconsin men’s basketball team has lost a couple of players to the portal and gained a couple too, but there is still one open slot on the Badgers roster for next season and they will likely fill it with a big man.

UW has already tried to woo big men like Penn State’s John Harrar and Eastern Washington’s Tanner Groves who both ultimately ended up choosing other destinations. The most recent name that caught our eye is former Boston College forward (and native of Shakopee, Minn.) Steffon Mitchell.

Mitchell is a 6-foot-8 and 220 pound combo forward who played four years for Shakopee before taking a postgrad year at Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas. The 3-star recruit chose BC over offers from American, Central Michigan, Furman, Green Bay, North Dakota State, South Dakota and South Dakota State. The Badgers did show interest in Mitchell in high school, and there are tweets from 2015 to prove it, as he played on the same AAU team as Nate Reuvers.

Mitchell was named to the ACC all-defense team as a junior and this past season, as a senior, he averaged 9.1 points per game and 7.3 rebounds per game to go along with 1.4 steals per game and 1.0 blocks per game. Throughout his entire career at BC, he has been a plus defender and has shown an ability to get to the free throw line at an impressive rate, even leading the nation in free throw rate as a sophomore. He’s tough on the defensive boards and, outside of this past season, the offensive boards too. While he isn’t a great three point shooter (26.7% for his career) he can make the shot and will take them if open. Lastly, he is an efficient, low-usage player that would be great as a one year “rental” or “bridge” option for Greg Gard next season.

We’ll keep you posted if we learn anything more!