Wisconsin men’s basketball: transfer portal rumblings X

We threw out a bunch of names that the Badgers might be interested in from the transfer portal over the last few weeks and since then more names have only been added to the portal. Wisconsin has added backup point guard Kamari McGee from Green Bay and shooting guard Max Klesmit from Wofford but has missed out on other top targets. Let’s take a look at a couple of other new players that Wisconsin has shown interest in.

New interest

• As part of my long-running feud (read: I am blocked on Twitter) with sentient college basketball tweeting program Jon Rothstein, I will not embed the post where Rothstein reports Wisconsin is one of the schools that has interest in St. Bonaventure transfer wing Dominick Welch, but you should know that he noted it first. Through back channels (read: my buddy who texts me screenshots of Rothstein tweets if he mentions Wisconsin) I know that Welch is also hearing from Pitt, Texas Tech, Kansas, Oklahoma State, Wake Forest, Maryland, Rutgers and SMU. Assistant coach Sharif Chambliss is following Welch on Twitter, so you know this is at least a little bit serious.

Welch, who is a 6-foot-5 and 205 pound wing from Buffalo, N.Y., would have one year remaining to play in college. Last season he averaged 12.3 points, 6.0 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.3 steals per game while shooting 37.4% from beyond the arc on high volume and 41.4% from the field overall. His three point shooting was good for No. 377 in the nation and he had an eFG% of 54.6% which was No. 288 in the land.

He played an insane 93.5% of available minutes in 33 games for the Bonnies last season, and somehow played even more (95.9%) during conference play. In fact, over the last three years, Welch hasn’t played fewer than 85% of his team’s minutes in a season. Welch has the strong frame to guard multiple positions, most likely one through three but you can see a world where he is used as a small ball power forward type player.

He is the all-time leading scorer in Western New York boys basketball history, finishing his career at Cheektowaga High School with 2,376 points. He took a post-grad year at SPIRE Institute in Ohio where he earned Power-5 Prep Conference Player of the Year honors. Coming out of high school he was a 3-star small forward recruit.

UW still has two scholarships open for next season and Welch would be a nice fit for Greg Gard’s team. They will also be looking for a big man to fill out the roster, but Welch’s versatility and shooting have to put him fairly high on Wisconsin’s wish list. It should be noted that Welch has also declared for the NBA Draft and would have to decide by June 1 whether or not he’d like to keep his name in the draft pool.

Top target heading elsewhere

• One of the first names that appeared on Wisconsin’s radar in the transfer portal was Wright State big man Grant Basile. The 6-foot-9 native of Pewaukee will not be returning to his home state, however, and has picked Virginia Tech as his next destination. He had also been considering Notre Dame and Iowa State.