Wisconsin football recruiting: a number of offers come out of camp on Monday

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

• 2023 3-star ATH/WR Trech Kekahuna (Honolulu) out of the Saint Louis (Hawaii) School earned an offer from the Badgers at camp on Monday. He also has offers from Boise State, Hawaii, Nevada and a small handful of others. Kekahuna is from the same high school as OLB Nick Herbig and new transfer S Kamo’i Latu, although Evan Flood of Badger247 mentions that Kekahuna is transferring to Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas for his senior season ($).

Kekahuna stands at 5-foot-11 and weighs in the neighborhood of 185 pounds and is rated by 247Sports as the No. 156 ATH in the country and No. 13 player in the state of Hawaii. He doesn’t have a Composite rating yet, but he appears to be a player that could shoot up the rankings during his senior season.

Upon receiving the UW offer, both Flood and 247 West Coast analyst Jackson Moore immediately put in Crystal Balls for the Badgers with high confidence. This would be a nice get for Wisconsin and would keep the Hawaii pipeline that they are developing open.

Last year as a junior, Kekahuna caught 56 passes for 672 yards and three scores while rushing for 192 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries. Here are his Hudl highlights where he mostly plays at wideout. That is also presumably where the Badgers will want him to play since he tagged WR coach Alvis Whitted in his offer tweet.

I’ll be honest with you, I was really impressed with his highlight video. Kekahuna is fast, tough and shows impressive ability to gain extra yards after the catch. He looks like a player that would become a Pro Bowler on the Patriots when Tom Brady was there after catching 115 passes in a season. He has already paid his own way to Madison, from Honolulu remember, twice so hopefully the Badgers can seal the deal here and get him on board.

• 2025 CB Tre Poteat (Verona) out of Verona Area High School FINALLY received a scholarship offer from Wisconsin. Poteat, who is the son of Wisconsin’s CB coach Hank Poteat, has been on a bit of a heater recently on the recruiting trail. In the past month he has earned offers from Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, UConn and UMass. He also has earlier offers from Eastern Kentucky and Toledo.

Standing at around 6-foot-0 and weighing 165 pounds Poteat is unranked by all of the major recruiting services since he has only completed his freshman season. Here are his defensive highlights from last year. Poteat has great size for the position already, and is presumably still growing, and since his dad is a coach at UW you’d also presume that he’d give the Badgers a good, long look. Either way, he’s definitely one of the top prospects in the state to keep an eye on moving forward.

• 2024 4-star S Vaboue Toure (Irvington, N.J.) out of Irvington High School also earned an offer from UW on Monday. The talented defensive back has other offers from Alabama, Duke, Florida State, Kentucky, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Penn State and Rutgers among a few others.

Toure stands at 6-foot-1 and weighs 185 pounds and is rated as the No. 122 player and No. 14 safety in the country by the 247 Composite. He’s also listed as the top player in the Garden State for 2024. New Jersey is always a state that the Badgers try and recruit hard, so it’s no surprise to see this offer go out.

Here is his Hudl tape from his sophomore season. He shows solid ball skills and is definitely not afraid of a little contact as there are multiple highlights of him bursting through the line of scrimmage to blow up WR screens and the like.

He looks like a really good player and the high-end offers that he has already received shows that coaches agree with my extremely in-depth assessment. It’ll be interesting to see how deep the Badgers get in this recruitment, but hopefully he wants to be coached by a guy like Jim Leonhard.

Badgers in the mix for 5-star QB...technically

• On Thursday night at 6 p.m. CT, 2024 5-star QB CJ Carr (Saline, Mich.) will make his college decision and the Badgers are in the mix still! The other five finalists are Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Michigan State and Notre Dame. Carr is the grandson of former Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr and the Wolverines are considered the co-favorites, albeit a second place co-favorite if that makes sense, with the Fighting Irish for the younger Carr’s commitment. It’s cool that UW made the cut here, but there is a 0% chance he ends up in Madison.