Wisconsin basketball recruiting: Gehrig Normand talks UW official visit and some other updates

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!

Top target takes official visit

• 2023 4-star wing Gehrig Normand (North Richland Hills, Texas) out of Birdville High School took his official visit to Madison last week. By all accounts, it went really well! Evan Flood at Badger247 ($) said that Normand is open to committing in July, but may wait until August depending on what other offers come his way. “It was just so fun and we had a blast. I actually grew up a Wisconsin fan a little bit and Sam Dekker was one of my all-time favorites in college basketball,” Normand told Jon McNamara of BadgerBlitz ($). “We did everything on my visit. I went to Barry Alvarez’s house, was on FaceTime with Sam Dekker, hung out with the players and even did a photo shoot,” he said to Dillon Graff at BadgersWire.

Normand is thought to be considering Wisconsin, Texas, Mizzou and Oklahoma State the most, although he does not have an official final list of schools. According to his 247 profile, he is currently on a visit to Austin and later this week he’ll head to Stillwater. This past weekend was another evaluation weekend and Normand played well at the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches (TABC) event.

The 6-foot-6 and 180ish pound wing is rated as the No. 94 player in the country by the 247 Composite and the No. 89 player in the country by the On3 Consensus. While it may be difficult to get him to leave his home state, just due to distance from home, it sounds like the Badgers have done everything possible to be right there in the end when he makes a decision.

Other targets heading elsewhere

• 2024 4-star SF/PF Cooper Koch (Peoria, Ill.) announced his commitment to Iowa last week. Wisconsin and Purdue were the other two schools he was considering, but the siren song of his dad’s alma mater (JR Koch played for the Hawkeyes as well) was too strong. Koch mentioned ($) that his relationship with Greg Gard and Dean Oliver (who played at Iowa with Koch’s father) made things tough.

• 2023 4-star PF Milan Momcilovic (Pewaukee) released his top-six schools last week and those schools are: Iowa State, Michigan State, UCLA, Virginia, Minnesota and Louisville. Despite being a talented in-state player, the Badgers have not (and won’t, apparently) offered Momcilovic. There is much discussion on various message boards about why this is/isn’t a good idea, but where I fall on this topic is: Gard and his staff are very good at evaluating talent and finding players that fit their system. If they didn’t want to offer, I think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt there.