Wisconsin Basketball Earns Spot in ESPN’s Way-Too-Early Top 25

The 2023-24 college basketball season has drawn to a close. Greg Gard and the Wisconsin Badgers basketball program showed signs of growth, finishing 22-14 overall after missing the big dance last season.

However, James Madison bounced them in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and showed the Badgers just how far they still need to go. UConn, on the other hand, mowed down the competition en route to its second consecutive national championship under Dan Hurley.

While the Wisconsin basketball program is returning a strong core of players next season such as Chucky Hepburn, Max Klesmit, Steven Crowl, and John Blackwell, the Badgers must rely heavily on the transfer portal to offset some of its impactful outgoing players.

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Even with significant departures such as AJ Storr, who went portaling, and Tyler Wahl, who exhausted his eligibility, ESPN still sees Wisconsin men’s basketball as one of the nation’s top teams, coming in at No. 24 in their way-too-early top 25 rankings heading into 2024-25.

“The loss of AJ Storr hurts the Badgers, especially given the dynamism he provided on the offensive end, but Greg Gard still has Max Klesmit, Chucky Hepburn, Steven Crowl and John Blackwell coming back to form the core of his 2024-25 team,” Jeff Borzello wrote.

“Wisconsin had its best offense last season since Bo Ryan was in Madison, but that led to huge issues on the defensive end of the floor. Gard will have to find better balance if the Badgers are to advance out of the first weekend for the first time since 2017.”

Under Coach Gard’s leadership, Wisconsin basketball exhibited notable improvements last season, particularly in offensive efficiency. Offensive analyst Kirk Penney played a key role in re-tooling the Badgers offense to incorporate more European ball-screens and a lot of pick-and-rolls. That led to UW finishing with the No. 17 offense in the country.

With Wisconsin’s newfound spending pool thanks to some NIL initiatives, the hope is that the Badgers can re-create departed players in the aggregate through the transfer portal to make a run at a Big Ten title next season.

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