Wisconsin football recruiting: UW offers two new talented prospects

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 offers

• 2025 ATH Adam Shovlin (Duryea, Pa.) out of St. Thomas More (Oakdale, Conn.) School earned an offer from UW this week. Shovlin also has offers from Boston College, Duke, UConn, UMass, Virginia Tech and he is receiving interest from Iowa and Pitt as well. Shovlin is originally from Pennsylvania (Duryea is in between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in northeast PA) but is transferring to St. Thomas More, a boarding school in Connecticut and is reclassifying from the 2024 class to the 2025 class, according to HokieHaven ($) the Virginia Tech Rivals site.

Standing at 6-foot-5 or 6-foot-6 and weighing 235ish pounds, Shovlin plays defensive end and tight end in high school. Based on him posting a picture of Troy Fumagalli, one could assume that the Badgers are recruiting him as a tight end. As a sophomore at Pittston (Pa.) Area High School he had 17 catches for 161 yards and was named to the 4A All-State team by the Pa. Football Writers.

Here is his Hudl tape. He is a ferocious blocker, which is what surely drew the Badgers to him. I don’t think he’ll ever be a downfield threat, but he appears to have soft hands and is used a lot by his old high school team as a safety valve receiver. This is the kind of player that would thrive in Wisconsin’s offense, however.

• 2024 3-star LB Sam Pilof (Middleton) out of Middleton High School earned an offer from Wisconsin after a visit to campus this past weekend. Pilof has two other offers, from Iowa State and Rutgers, but all of the major recruiting sites immediately moved the Badgers to the top of his list after they offered. Both Evan Flood at 247 and Jon McNamara at Rivals put in predictions for UW.

Standing at 6-foot-3 and weighing 205 pounds, Pilof is rated as the No. 434 player and No. 42 LB in the nation by the On3 Consensus and he is also listed as the No. 5 player in Wisconsin. As a side note, the ‘24 in-state class should be a pretty good one for the state of Wisconsin.

Here is his sophomore Hudl tape. Pilof had 98 tackles, 12.5 sacks and six forced fumbles (one recovery) last season for Middleton and is basically all over the field for the Cardinals. Not sure if Pilof would play inside or outside for UW, but he looks like the type of versatile player that could thrive in either spot.

UW makes cut down list

• 2023 3-star WR Tre Spivey (Chandler, Ariz.) released a top-six schools recently and Wisconsin made the cut. The other five schools are Arizona, BYU, Kansas, Kansas State and Washington. The home-state Wildcats seem to be the odds on favorite to land the 6-foot-4 wideout, according to On3 and 247’s prediction algorithms, but hopefully the Badgers can make a late push. You may remember that Spivey is the son of former Milwaukee Brewers infielder Junior Spivey, so he has a connection to the state of Wisconsin despite living so far away.

Top target heading elsewhere

• 3-star CB Nate Johnson III (Clearwater, Fla.) took an official visit to Boston College two weekends ago, after taking one to Madison, and decided that he wanted to be an Eagle and not a Badger. UW already has a pair of CB commits in the 2023 class and are looking good for 4-star Braeden Marshall and 3-star Jace Arnold, so this isn’t a death knell for the position group in the class or anything.