Wisconsin Badgers Thread

[mattg]

McCabe clearly lol

lol no chance I've literally never argued for McCabe as some big miss by UW or anything, also that year has the as has been discussed Herro/Haliburton situation that UW bungled.

But I mean just last year no interest in Hunter or Podziemski? Do they not count?

If you're talking guys to develop that fit the "UW mold" and would stay 4 years 100% AND you put such esteem in UW's ability to develop talent (as in you view that they would get more out of less than other schools) what about Matt Thomas, Riley LaChance, Brady Ellingson, Marcus Domask, and an absolute littany of lower/unranked shooter types?

[MickeyDavis]

Jay Wright retiring

[RiotPunch]

Jay Wright retiring

[MikeIsGood]

Jay Wright retiring

I'm sad about this (relatively speaking). I actually like him a lot.

[mattg]

Jay Wright retiring

I'm sad about this (relatively speaking). I actually like him a lot.

Yeah I still have fond memories of Villanova's 4 guard lineups with Mike Nardi, Kyle Lowry, Allan Ray, and Randy Foye from the mid 2000s. Such a great coach at getting players to buy in and have a team identity, while balancing that with giving them immense freedom offensively.

Weird timing to retire though.

[Kerb Hohl]

McCabe clearly lol

lol no chance I've literally never argued for McCabe as some big miss by UW or anything, also that year has the as has been discussed Herro/Haliburton situation that UW bungled.

But I mean just last year no interest in Hunter or Podziemski? Do they not count?

If you're talking guys to develop that fit the "UW mold" and would stay 4 years 100% AND you put such esteem in UW's ability to develop talent (as in you view that they would get more out of less than other schools) what about Matt Thomas, Riley LaChance, Brady Ellingson, Marcus Domask, and an absolute littany of lower/unranked shooter types?

1. Sometimes it’s a 2-way street. I have no idea if Hunter initially had interest. They also had Chucky Hepburn already in tow. Supposedly Podziemski was not interested in Wisconsin.

2. You can’t take everyone. There’s only 12 spots. It’s not so easy to just get all of those guys. You take LaChance, for instance, and the other guys on your list now aren’t sure they want to come in and play the backup 2. It’s a lot harder than it looks. That’s why these guys end up randomly at Vanderbilt after Marquette and Wisconsin already have their guy at the 2 and he’s a true freshman or whatever.

Those guys mostly ended up at **** schools that all ended up markedly worse than Wisconsin, other than Hunter and Thomas. I’d say Wisconsin was still a better team this year than ISU even given the tournament loss and Hunter left for NIL money anyways.

Are you saying we should model ourselves after teams that are consistently worse than Wisconsin? Bold!

[mattg]

McCabe clearly lol

lol no chance I've literally never argued for McCabe as some big miss by UW or anything, also that year has the as has been discussed Herro/Haliburton situation that UW bungled.

But I mean just last year no interest in Hunter or Podziemski? Do they not count?

If you're talking guys to develop that fit the "UW mold" and would stay 4 years 100% AND you put such esteem in UW's ability to develop talent (as in you view that they would get more out of less than other schools) what about Matt Thomas, Riley LaChance, Brady Ellingson, Marcus Domask, and an absolute littany of lower/unranked shooter types?

1. Sometimes it’s a 2-way street. I have no idea if Hunter initially had interest. They also had Chucky Hepburn already in tow. Supposedly Podziemski was not interested in Wisconsin.

2. You can’t take everyone. There’s only 12 spots. It’s not so easy to just get all of those guys. You take LaChance, for instance, and the other guys on your list now aren’t sure they want to come in and play the backup 2. It’s a lot harder than it looks. That’s why these guys end up randomly at Vanderbilt after Marquette and Wisconsin already have their guy at the 2 and he’s a true freshman or whatever.

Those guys mostly ended up at **** schools that all ended up markedly worse than Wisconsin, other than Hunter and Thomas. I’d say Wisconsin was still a better team this year than ISU even given the tournament loss and Hunter left for NIL money anyways.

Are you saying we should model ourselves after teams that are consistently worse than Wisconsin? Bold!

No, what I'm saying is that with how highly UW fans believe in their coaching staff and system of developing players that these guys end up with better outcomes than they did at the schools they went to had they gone to UW instead and end up as better than the guys UW has playing the same roles. Like if Matt Thomas is recruited instead of Riley Dearring for example. Also LaChance was better than literally every SG UW has had in the last decade aside from obviously Davis.

Also, why do so many guys not have interest in Wisconsin? Like it's a great school, phenomenal party scene, classic big college experience. Is the coaching staff that off putting or something? It's odd. Obviously can't get every guy, that's not realistic and some guys want to go away from home too. But like ****, letting other boring midwest schools get some of these guys?

Finally, are you surprised that Tyrese Hunter left for NIL money considering his parents are freaking dead?

[Kerb Hohl]

lol no chance I've literally never argued for McCabe as some big miss by UW or anything, also that year has the as has been discussed Herro/Haliburton situation that UW bungled.

But I mean just last year no interest in Hunter or Podziemski? Do they not count?

If you're talking guys to develop that fit the "UW mold" and would stay 4 years 100% AND you put such esteem in UW's ability to develop talent (as in you view that they would get more out of less than other schools) what about Matt Thomas, Riley LaChance, Brady Ellingson, Marcus Domask, and an absolute littany of lower/unranked shooter types?

1. Sometimes it’s a 2-way street. I have no idea if Hunter initially had interest. They also had Chucky Hepburn already in tow. Supposedly Podziemski was not interested in Wisconsin.

2. You can’t take everyone. There’s only 12 spots. It’s not so easy to just get all of those guys. You take LaChance, for instance, and the other guys on your list now aren’t sure they want to come in and play the backup 2. It’s a lot harder than it looks. That’s why these guys end up randomly at Vanderbilt after Marquette and Wisconsin already have their guy at the 2 and he’s a true freshman or whatever.

Those guys mostly ended up at **** schools that all ended up markedly worse than Wisconsin, other than Hunter and Thomas. I’d say Wisconsin was still a better team this year than ISU even given the tournament loss and Hunter left for NIL money anyways.

Are you saying we should model ourselves after teams that are consistently worse than Wisconsin? Bold!

No, what I'm saying is that with how highly UW fans believe in their coaching staff and system of developing players that these guys end up with better outcomes than they did at the schools they went to had they gone to UW instead and end up as better than the guys UW has playing the same roles. Like if Matt Thomas is recruited instead of Riley Dearring for example. Also LaChance was better than literally every SG UW has had in the last decade aside from obviously Davis.

Also, why do so many guys not have interest in Wisconsin? Like it's a great school, phenomenal party scene, classic big college experience. Is the coaching staff that off putting or something? It's odd. Obviously can't get every guy, that's not realistic and some guys want to go away from home too. But like ****, letting other boring midwest schools get some of these guys?

Finally, are you surprised that Tyrese Hunter left for NIL money considering his parents are freaking dead?

It is very apparent that they like to play a more “exciting” brand of basketball. In some cases it works out, that’s up to them.

Once again, Wisconsin is better than all of these **** teams that get all the coveted guards you want. Maybe you should consider the reason for that.

[mattg]

1. Sometimes it’s a 2-way street. I have no idea if Hunter initially had interest. They also had Chucky Hepburn already in tow. Supposedly Podziemski was not interested in Wisconsin.

2. You can’t take everyone. There’s only 12 spots. It’s not so easy to just get all of those guys. You take LaChance, for instance, and the other guys on your list now aren’t sure they want to come in and play the backup 2. It’s a lot harder than it looks. That’s why these guys end up randomly at Vanderbilt after Marquette and Wisconsin already have their guy at the 2 and he’s a true freshman or whatever.

Those guys mostly ended up at **** schools that all ended up markedly worse than Wisconsin, other than Hunter and Thomas. I’d say Wisconsin was still a better team this year than ISU even given the tournament loss and Hunter left for NIL money anyways.

Are you saying we should model ourselves after teams that are consistently worse than Wisconsin? Bold!

No, what I'm saying is that with how highly UW fans believe in their coaching staff and system of developing players that these guys end up with better outcomes than they did at the schools they went to had they gone to UW instead and end up as better than the guys UW has playing the same roles. Like if Matt Thomas is recruited instead of Riley Dearring for example. Also LaChance was better than literally every SG UW has had in the last decade aside from obviously Davis.

Also, why do so many guys not have interest in Wisconsin? Like it's a great school, phenomenal party scene, classic big college experience. Is the coaching staff that off putting or something? It's odd. Obviously can't get every guy, that's not realistic and some guys want to go away from home too. But like ****, letting other boring midwest schools get some of these guys?

Finally, are you surprised that Tyrese Hunter left for NIL money considering his parents are freaking dead?

It is very apparent that they like to play a more “exciting” brand of basketball. In some cases it works out, that’s up to them.

Once again, Wisconsin is better than all of these **** teams that get all the coveted guards you want. Maybe you should consider the reason for that.

You can hide behind that UW is better crap all you want, but it's completely irrelevant to the points I'm making. I've NEVER EVER argued those schools are better than UW. Ever. That's like your weird insecurity that always comes out whenever this subject is brought up. I'm literally saying those schools have worse coaching staffs, worse programs, less stability etc, all things that directly impact the outcome of players. Yet they get dudes who are OBJECTIVELY better than UW players on court. If you can't plainly see that swapping guys who were magnitudes better as shooters for the guys UW was playing as wait for it...strictly shooters (Brevin Pritzel for example) wouldn't make the team better, I don't know what to tell you. And that's just looking at straight production comparison. Love to see what LaChance or someone does getting 4 years of the Wisconsin development instead of the unstable situation they had to play in.

Also, the "these guys just want to play exciting but losing basketball" is such BS. It's un-proveable and there's no evidence of it. What there IS evidence of, is UW not even trying to recruit kids for whatever reason and that's what we are discussing.

[Kerb Hohl]

No, what I'm saying is that with how highly UW fans believe in their coaching staff and system of developing players that these guys end up with better outcomes than they did at the schools they went to had they gone to UW instead and end up as better than the guys UW has playing the same roles. Like if Matt Thomas is recruited instead of Riley Dearring for example. Also LaChance was better than literally every SG UW has had in the last decade aside from obviously Davis.

Also, why do so many guys not have interest in Wisconsin? Like it's a great school, phenomenal party scene, classic big college experience. Is the coaching staff that off putting or something? It's odd. Obviously can't get every guy, that's not realistic and some guys want to go away from home too. But like ****, letting other boring midwest schools get some of these guys?

Finally, are you surprised that Tyrese Hunter left for NIL money considering his parents are freaking dead?

It is very apparent that they like to play a more “exciting” brand of basketball. In some cases it works out, that’s up to them.

Once again, Wisconsin is better than all of these **** teams that get all the coveted guards you want. Maybe you should consider the reason for that.

You can hide behind that UW is better crap all you want, but it's completely irrelevant to the points I'm making. I've NEVER EVER argued those schools are better than UW. Ever. That's like your weird insecurity that always comes out whenever this subject is brought up. I'm literally saying those schools have worse coaching staffs, worse programs, less stability etc, all things that directly impact the outcome of players. Yet they get dudes who are OBJECTIVELY better than UW players on court. If you can't plainly see that swapping guys who were magnitudes better as shooters for the guys UW was playing as wait for it...strictly shooters (Brevin Pritzel for example) wouldn't make the team better, I don't know what to tell you. And that's just looking at straight production comparison. Love to see what LaChance or someone does getting 4 years of the Wisconsin development instead of the unstable situation they had to play in.

Also, the "these guys just want to play exciting but losing basketball" is such BS. It's un-proveable and there's no evidence of it. What there IS evidence of, is UW not even trying to recruit kids for whatever reason and that's what we are discussing.

I never said they want to play losing basketball. Things turned out well for Jordan Poole who was never interested in UW. Plenty of others are in the NBA or played with good college teams.

I took a boring corporate job out of college but I love it. Great work/life balance with a family and such and it gave me the stability that I expected. There are others in my class that never would've gone for that and landed with a startup that was way more exciting. To each their own.

As for the pure shooting guards you desire, maybe they've just chosen the wrong shooter each time or maybe it's a blind spot...or maybe it is somewhat by design. They only get one at a time on the roster as it is so there have only been 3 or 4 in the past decade. Gasser (kind of), Pritzl, Brust, maybe Davison counts? Either they have a criteria that works and we don't realize it (they value defense and therefore some of those guys weren't prioritized based on their evaluation) or maybe it's a major blind spot. Other than last year, they are almost always a top tier 3-point shooting team. I think they like to get guys that satisfy all other criteria and are decent shooters and they work from there.

[Brewhoopfan]

I'm sad about this (relatively speaking). I actually like him a lot.

Yeah I still have fond memories of Villanova's 4 guard lineups with Mike Nardi, Kyle Lowry, Allan Ray, and Randy Foye from the mid 2000s. Such a great coach at getting players to buy in and have a team identity, while balancing that with giving them immense freedom offensively.

Weird timing to retire though.

I'm probably naive, but I think Wright has done things the right way and ran a clean program. The dirtiest part of the job just doubled with the transfer portal and NIL forces every program to participate in funneling $$$ to players. So....timing makes sense to me.

[Kerb Hohl]

Going back to this, the difference between all of the guys you mention is razor thin.

First of all, Matt Thomas got offered by Wisconsin! I don't remember the outcome here, but yes, Riley Dearring sucked. Iowa State also recruited Sherron Dorsey-Walker as a freshman that same year. Ever hear of him? That's right. He sucked at the D1 level but did do alright after transferring down to Oakland. Point being, teams miss sometimes!

Also, Iowa State was a legitimately good team and not much further away than Madison. Maybe he liked his path to getting shots up earlier given Gasser and Brust were still around.

I'm just going to summarize the volume 3-point shooters on this list from 2013-2022 to basically cover the decade you mentioned.

Ben Brust (Senior season): 39% on 244 3s. He shot 39% on 607 career 3s.
Josh Gasser (Junior/Senior seasons): 41% on 235 3s. He shot 40% on 391 career 3s
Bronson Koenig (took over as shooting PG): 39% on 695 3s
Brevin Pritzl: 37% on 383 3s
Brad Davison: 36% on 836 3s

Here are the guys you mentioned:
Matt Thomas: 40% on 634 3s
Riley LaChance: 41% on 630 3s
Marcus Domask 36% on 304 3s (he is also one of the only guys in here that shot a meaningful amount of 2s, but also plays in a **** conference)

To be fair to Davison, Domask, and some of Pritzl, a lot of their 3s came with a longer 3-point line.

Other than Thomas who is just quick/big enough to hang at the last roster spot in the NBA, none of these guys amounted to **** afterwards.

Domask probably would be much worse than Davison in a major conference. *Jerkoff motion*

;tldr - there was basically no difference here! I guess we could all dream that Matt Thomas would've liked to commit to a crowded rotation because he might be the best of the bunch, but outside of that, there is almost no difference and I'd also argue that Domask would be a very mediocre player in a major conference.

Gasser/Brust/Koenig were roughly equal to Matt Thomas and LaChance in that era. Davison/Pritzl probably better than Domask in some combination. Who cares.

[DingleJerry]

Surprised you didn't remember the Matt Thomas story. He and Koenig are from the same area and were rivals and basically ended up hating each other. There was no way they were going to play together in college. So UW essentially had to pick one. Koenig was higher rated and ended up being a great player for us. And as a reminder, Koenig is from WI. Much of this debate to me comes to "team already takes a bunch of kids from WI and just over border, yet somehow we're complaining they don't get more". Then complaining we don't recruit like schools that get worse results than us. This isn't like football where you can pile up kids at similar positions and it's normal to sit for 2-3 years to get physically ready. UW is likely one of the most locally founded high level D1 teams. I'd maybe guess IA is a bit more or about the same, but UW is on the higher end of the spectrum for sure.

One thing UW has messed up in recent years imo is getting too big of classes. So like I said how you don't have 20 spots a year, bball has limited spots so can't just take guys. WEll, UW has messed up and gotten in a pattern of having big 5-6 person classes followed by only having 1-2 spots a year. This has hurt them post 2015. Seems that's all gonna change now due to the portal though.

I hadn't seen Domask ended up at D1, last I heard he was committed to a D2 type out of MN. Good for him. I'm originally from that area so knew about him early, he was a beast in HS but no way he had the athleticism to play big D1. He'd play right into making fun of UW for having unathletic white guys.

[ReasonablySober]

I'm sad about this (relatively speaking). I actually like him a lot.

Yeah I still have fond memories of Villanova's 4 guard lineups with Mike Nardi, Kyle Lowry, Allan Ray, and Randy Foye from the mid 2000s. Such a great coach at getting players to buy in and have a team identity, while balancing that with giving them immense freedom offensively.

Weird timing to retire though.

Yea. Normally coaches announce it, then wait a year.

[Kerb Hohl]

I’m generally not one to overreact to recruiting and now transfer portal stuff but while we have a ton of minutes to offer, we seem to suck at this lightning fast recruiting/sales pitch game of the transfer portal.

Still time to go but there’s a chance we are rolling out Jordan Davis and Neath in the starting 5 with some D2 scrub as our bench forward unless we make new inroads.

Read on Twitter

?s=21&t=85ZBDQe84u_60MnKkJi2gg

[ReasonablySober]

I posted it in the other CBB thread, but unless the Badgers are ponying up big NIL I don't know why you'd choose Wisconsin.

[Kerb Hohl]

I posted it in the other CBB thread, but unless the Badgers are ponying up big NIL I don't know why you'd choose Wisconsin.

They supposedly are doing NIL stuff and have a bunch of public initiatives about it but as we know, they are not a flashy, “wow the big recruit” type and I feel like we won’t see them offering a million dollars to Nigel Pack types.

But I’m not sure Vander Plas is a guy that is going to garner much NIL. I also don’t think Bennett is too deep into that game either, with Virginia on the final list (I know due to his relationship with the family that is why).

I’ll be interested to see if someone like Vander Plas gets any sort of NIL. The top 20 sort of guys will.

[MikeIsGood]

If a guy in the transfer portal is looking exclusively at Power 5 schools, I think it's unfortunately naive to think that NIL is not a factor. It's only to what extent. Wisconsin, Ohio State, Virginia is a tier-2 list - think there's likely a solid opportunity in play.

[Kerb Hohl]

If a guy in the transfer portal is looking exclusively at Power 5 schools, I think it's unfortunately naive to think that NIL is not a factor. It's only to what extent. Wisconsin, Ohio State, Virginia is a tier-2 list - think there's likely a solid opportunity in play.

Have we seen any reports out for what guys like this are getting, if anything? Legitimately curious.

The NPOY types like Tschibwe and NBA caliber guys like Pack are getting big $. Are people going to pay up for Grant Basile?

[MikeIsGood]

If a guy in the transfer portal is looking exclusively at Power 5 schools, I think it's unfortunately naive to think that NIL is not a factor. It's only to what extent. Wisconsin, Ohio State, Virginia is a tier-2 list - think there's likely a solid opportunity in play.

Have we seen any reports out for what guys like this are getting, if anything? Legitimately curious.

The NPOY types like Tschibwe and NBA caliber guys like Pack are getting big $. Are people going to pay up for Grant Basile?

Actual money? I don't know and I don't think there's any mandate to have it reported. But it is not a small list of athletes, and it's not just a who's-who.

https://nilcollegeathletes.com/athletes

Wisconsin now has a portal for all student-athletes to use to help promote themselves.

https://app.opendorse.com/shop/wisconsin-badgers

This is a thing even if we're just talking in the hundreds or low thousands. I posted this on the football board many weeks ago, but UW is also one of just a small handful of programs right now offering bonus payments for academic performance. NCAA allows for up to $6000 annually per athlete for academic bonuses. Which is great, but just another payment factor for any kid to think of - and us to try and sell.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/33684066/only-21-130-ncaa-fbs-level-schools-say-plans-provide-allowed-academic-bonus-payments-athletes-year