Wisconsin basketball recruiting: Greg Gard offers 2024 4-star guard Nick Janowski

On Monday afternoon, a big shoe dropped in the world of Wisconsin Badgers basketball recruiting. 2024 4-star guard Nick Janowski (Pewaukee) out of Pewaukee High School announced that he has received an offer from UW, a scholarship that was thought to be a long time coming, at least by fans of Wisconsin high school hoops.

Janowski has offers from Georgia Tech, Iowa State, Marquette and Southern Cal while he’s receiving interest from schools like Creighton, Iowa, Minnesota, Notre Dame and Virignia.

The 247 Composite lists Janowski as the No. 46 player and No. 5 combo guard in the nation while also being the No. 2 player in the state of Wisconsin.

Here are some fast facts about Janowski:

Hometown: Pewaukee
High School: Pewaukee High School
Grassroots Team: Phenom U - Team Herro
Height: 6-foot-3 or 6-foot-4
Weight: around 180 pounds
Position: shooting guard/combo guard

The first thing you’ll notice about Jankowski’s game is that he’s left-handed! The sweet-shooting sophomore has every type of three pointer in his bag: step back, off the dribble, spot up, it’s all there. While he isn’t some “above-the-rim-freakshow-athlete,” he can take it to the rim and finish through contact when the scenario arises. His footwork is impressive as he always seems to get square to the basket when shooting regardless of where he is on the court.

Listed as a combo guard by 247 Sports, his future is most likely as a shooting guard who can be a secondary play-maker and handle the ball if there is foul trouble. He makes the correct reads when passing the ball, but he isn’t Steph Curry or James Harden. Hard to say how he projects defensively, but given his size and competitiveness I doubt he’ll be worse than “solid team defender.”

Playing on a Pewaukee team that has now won back-to-back state titles, Janowski averaged 16.7 points per game as a sophomore while shooting 52.7% from the field. He was 85-of-188 (45.2%) from deep which is really quite impressive. As a freshman, he shot 52-of-84 from three which was good for an eye-popping 61.9%.

He hauled in 4.1 rebounds per game, dished out 2.5 assists per game and had 1.2 steals per game. His 1.3 turnovers per game isn’t worrisome, but one I’d assume that would be higher if he played more point guard.

Janowski is the seventh offer that Wisconsin has out in the 2024 class. The Badgers are also going hard after point guard Daniel Freitag (Alexandria, Minn.) and shooting guard Jack Robison (Lakeville, Minn.) and have also offered in-state wing Kon Knueppel (Milwaukee). It’s tough to know what Wisconsin’s scholarship situation will look like in two years, but the Badgers would probably (at a minimum) take two of these four players, regardless of stated position.

While there is a long way to go still in his recruitment, Jon McNamara at BadgerBlitz put in a prediction for Wisconsin to get Janowski as soon as the scholarship offer was announced. That is obviously a good sign for UW, but more offers will come in for him and Greg Gard and Sharif Chambliss will need to do a great job to keep Janowski home.