Wisconsin recruiting: new football offer, new personnel staff and a possible men’s hoops commit

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 (sometimes more) 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 4-star CB Malik Muhammad (Dallas) out of South Oak Cliff High School announced that he has received an offer from Wisconsin earlier this week. He has over 40 offers including from Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, Southern Cal, Texas, Texas A&M and many others. He, uh, has a national recruitment to say the least.

Standing at 6-foot and 170 pounds, Muhammad already has good size for a cornerback. He is rated as the No. 70 player and No. 7 CB in the whole country by the 247 Composite. He is also listed as the No. 11 player in Texas. 247’s standalone ratings are even higher on Muhammad, listing him as the No. 44 player in the country and No. 6 CB.

As far as I can tell from Muhammad’s cousin’s profile pages, he has three cousins currently playing FBS football, one cousin who is also a prospect in 2023 and another cousin, A.J. Green, who plays cornerback for the Cleveland Browns currently. Green went to Oklahoma State, as does another one of his cousins, so Muhammad may take a longer look at the Cowboys than he would normally.

For whatever reason, his Hudl tape won’t embed here, but he looks like a guy who can shutdown his half of the field and also hold his own in the running game. I love that Wisconsin is throwing their hat in the ring here but it looks like a STEEP uphill climb for the Badgers to get in the mix for even a visit.

Men’s basketball news

• 2023 4-star big man Gus Yalden (Appleton) out of IMG Academy (Bradenton, Fla.) has scheduled three official visits for this October. He’ll be at Rutgers at the beginning of the month, Nebraska in the middle of the month and Wisconsin at the end of the month.

There is still a Crystal Ball prediction of Yalden to Wisconsin, so hopefully the official visit goes well because the Badgers could use a player of his caliber in the front-court.

• 2022 3-star SG Connor Essegian (Noble, Ind.) is planning on announcing his college decision on Wednesday evening. He is down to Loyola (Chicago), Creighton, IPFW, Minnesota, Butler, Wake Forest and Wisconsin. Many are predicting that Essegian will pick Wisconsin especially since he announced his commitment date so soon after visiting Madison.

• With extremely limited space in the ‘22 class, here is another piece of the puzzle that leads recruiting sleuths to believe that Essegian is picking Wisconsin. 2022 3-star SG Josh Dix (Council Bluffs, Iowa) has canceled his visit to Madison this weekend and is likely going to stay home and play for Iowa.

Official visitors

• 2023 QB Chase Spellman (Wales) out of Kettle Moraine was in town last weekend to catch the Penn State game.

• 2022 4-star K/P Aidan Driscoll (Waunakee) will be making the short trip to Madison for the game against Eastern Michigan on Saturday.

• Despite Dix no longer coming to Madison this weekend, there is still at least one basketball prospect coming to town. I can’t find the info publicly anywhere, and we do respect the paywall here, but it’s a talented 2024 prospect.

Football adds to personnel department

• We (read: I) keep forgetting to write about this, so here it finally is! The Badgers have added Steve Schramm to their football personnel department. He has experience as the director of player personnel at Kent State and also worked at Florida, Maryland and Syracuse. He also interned with the Baltimore Ravens. Schramm is one of the people brought in to replace Saeed Khalif and the other personnel staffers who left for Michigan State this offseason.