Wisconsin football recruiting: UW offers rangy CB Saboor Karriem out of New Jersey

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 3-star CB Saboor Karriem (West Orange, N.J.) out of West Orange High School earned an offer from Wisconsin on Friday. Karriem has over 20 offers, including from Duke, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Louisville, Maryland, Syracuse, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and many others. The Fighting Illini will have Karriem on campus for an official visit on June 3 and appear to be in the lead for his commitment.

Standing at 6-foot-3 and weighing around 180 pounds, Karriem has excellent size on the outside. He is rated as the No. 1,002 player and No. 97 CB in the nation by the On3 Consensus as well as the No. 18 player in New Jersey.

Here is Karriem’s junior season Hudl tape. He shows good hands and is a heady player (about three minutes into his highlights, he is on the punt return team and after his punt returner muffs the punt, he picks up the loose ball and returns it 40 odd yards). It is easy to get enamored with Karriem’s size, but he has the skills to play at a high level too.

Cutdown lists

• 2023 3-star EDGE Brad Spence (Houston) has cut his list of schools down to 10 and Wisconsin made it. He also has Arkansas, Arizona State, Cal, Duke, Mississippi State, Mizzou, Nebraska, Texas and Utah that he is still considering. What an eclectic list of schools! We noted in our post after he was offered that he “appears he plays all over the field for his high school: hand in the dirt, standing up to rush and he also plays more in a coverage/traditional OLB role too.”

Targets heading elsewhere

• 2023 4-star S Damon Walters (Bolingbrook, Ill.) is staying home and going to Northwestern, he announced on Saturday. The Badgers were very interested in Walters, but with the commitment of 3-star ATH Justin Taylor, who will most likely play safety at UW, there may have been a cooling of interest on both sides. It also seems likely, given the timeline, that NU was a dream offer for him since it only took a month and a half from offer to commitment.

• The Badgers were in the top-six for 2023 3-star WR Hilton Alexander II (Douglasville, Ga.) but he picked Wake Forest as the school he’ll be attending on Thursday. The speedy Alexander would have been a fun prospect to have on board, but UW still has some quality targets that they are after.