Wisconsin men’s basketball recruiting: top prospects set up visits to Madison

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!

Visits scheduled

• The weekend of June 18 will be a big one for Greg Gard and the men’s basketball team as they’ll be hosting 2022 3-star (Rivals only) PG Rowan Brumbaugh out of Northfield Mount Herman High School in Massachusetts on an official visit.

Brumbaugh will visit Georgetown (he is originally from Washington, D.C.) before seeing the Badgers and has scheduled a trip to Evanston, Ill. to see Northwestern at the end of June. His 247 profile notes that Princeton is also “warm” in his recruitment, so the Tigers may get one of his remaining two official visits.

Both Evan Flood of 247 and Jon McNamara of Rivals have put in predictions for Brumbaugh to end up choosing Wisconsin, so Gard will probably be hoping that he can seal the deal when Brumbaugh is on campus. It is also definitely worth noting that 6-foot-8 and 210 pound 3-star PF Braeden Moore (Nashville, Tenn.) will be on campus the same weekend for his official visit.

If things go perfectly, the Badgers could have their 2022 class basically wrapped up in one weekend this June.

• On June 14, the Badgers will have their top 2023 target on campus for an unofficial visit. 4-star C Gus Yalden (De Pere) who plays for IMG (Bradenton, Fla.) Academy is taking a swing through the midwest in June where he will also see Nebraska, Iowa and Iowa State.

Standing at 6-foot-8 and weighing 240 pounds, Yalden has nearly 20 offers and has been atop Wisconsin’s board for a very long time. Although he has moved around a bunch in his high school career, Gard has told him that the Badgers consider him as an in-state prospect and want him to consider UW his hometown school.

Yalden is a sweet shooting big man that appears to be a prototypical Wisconsin player and has been compared to a young Nikola Jokic. While that is a lofty, and potentially unfair, comparison, Yalden is extremely talented and would fit in seamlessly to UW’s style of offense.