Wisconsin basketball recruiting: 2023 4-star big man Gus Yalden is on campus

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 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!

Official visits

• 2023 4-star big man Gus Yalden, who is originally from Appleton but has moved a bunch in high school, is currently on an official visit to Wisconsin. He will reportedly be in town until Thursday and the Badgers will try and solidify their standing with the versatile big. UW offered Yalden back in July of 2020 and this recruitment has sort of been hot and cold since then, at least publicly. When the most recent live evaluation period started, though, Wisconsin was front and center for all of Yalden’s games and things appear to be trending in a positive direction. While it doesn’t seem likely that he commits this week, he told Evan Flood at Badger247 that he plans on cutting things down in “May-ish” and having a decision made before the Nike EYBL Peach Jam (July 17-24) tournament.

• Recently offered 2023 wing Jamie Kaiser, Jr. (Burke, Va.) finished up an official visit to Wisconsin on Tuesday. While he is not committed, he did have “a great time” on his trip and surely he wouldn’t just say that if he didn’t mean it! But seriously, it sounds like the Badgers have a done a great job, in a short period of time, with Kaiser’s recruitment. It’s hard to say where this might go, because Kaiser is just starting to garner a bunch of high major interest in basketball and he may want to see what sort of offers come his way this summer. However, securing your spot in a class early is also important especially with the transfer portal being as active as it is.

UW target heading elsewhere

• 2021-2022 Gatorade Player of the Year in Missouri, 2022 3-star PF Luke Northweather (Jefferson City, Mo.), was supposed to visit Wisconsin last week but ended up canceling his trip and committing to the Oklahoma Sooners instead. He hadn’t been offered by the Badgers yet, but presumably he would’ve been when he visited. His other offers were from Missouri and Wyoming. It’s hard to get too worked up over this as this all happened relatively quickly and I think that the Badgers will be able to find a better option in the transfer portal for next year.