Carter Gilmore Is More Than Meets the Eye for Wisconsin Basketball

Carter Gilmore Is More Than Meets the Eye for Wisconsin Basketball.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN. – Being involved in, or adjacent to, the subset of Wisconsin basketball fans that post regularly on message boards is a strange place to be. 

Threads can be informative, hilarious, and toxic, often all within just a couple of comments. When the team that a specific message board cares about is struggling, inevitably, the posters’ ire turns towards a player. I am not immune to criticizing a college athlete, but I try to at least make lighthearted jabs and not personal attacks.

That isn’t the case for everyone, however.

Last year’s Wisconsin Badgers basketball season did not go as planned. The fans, the coaches, and, most definitely, the players had higher expectations than “blow a big lead to North Texas in the semifinals of the NIT.” 

Unfortunately, a bunch of the anger that should’ve been directed elsewhere last season ended up pointing directly at one undeserving player…Carter Gilmore.

The Backstory of Wisconsin Basketball Forward Carter Gilmore

A native of Hartland, Wisconsin, Carter Gilmore comes from a family that knows ball. His father, Brian, played at UW-Platteville under Bo Ryan and won a D-III national title in 1991, while his mother, Stephanie, starred at Platteville and was inducted into the WIAC Hall of Fame in 2018.

Needless to say, Carter has been around basketball his entire life.

At Arrowhead High School, Gilmore graduated as the school’s all-time leading scorer (1,565 points) and led them to a program-best 23-1 record and a regional championship as a senior. He was the 2020 Classic Eight Conference Player of the Year and was named AP first-team All-State in his final high school season. Gilmore had scholarship offers from Milwaukee, DePaul, Illinois-Chicago, Indiana State, and a handful of others but this Wisconsin kid wanted to stay home and play for the Badgers.

So he decided to bet on himself and joined UW as a preferred walk-on.

“He is the epitome of what a Wisconsin Badger should be and is. He has grown up cherishing Wisconsin basketball and loving it and he still loves it as much as he did when he was 10 years old, as he does when he’s 21 years old. I think that shows how much pride and joy he has in the university, not just in basketball,” senior guard Max Klesmit, a fellow Wisconsin native, told me at Big Ten Media Days.

Gilmore appeared in nine games as a freshman, and then, before his sophomore season, he lived out the dream of hundreds of walk-ons around the country: he earned a scholarship for the 2021-22 season. He played in 22 games and averaged 7.9 minutes per contest on a Big Ten title-winning team.

The following season, his third on campus, Gilmore faced a challenge that I don’t think everyone fully appreciated. Due to recruiting shortcomings and an inability to get anyone in the transfer portal by Greg Gard and the UW coaching staff, Steven Crowl did not have a viable backup at center.

Enter the 6-foot-7 Carter Gilmore.

“To do what he did last year, which he wasn’t necessarily extremely comfortable doing, and put his body on the line every day to just come out there and just compete and take on that leadership role with guys like me? It was huge to see his leadership and what Wisconsin is about,” shooting guard Connor Essegian, who was a true freshman last year, said at Media Days.

Gilmore played in all 35 games, starting three, and averaged 2.6 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 0.9 assists in 12.9 minutes per game. He scored a career-high eight points against Iowa, grabbed a career-high seven boards against Illinois, and provided solid defense all season against a variety of talented Big Ten big men. A lot of fans were frustrated with this arrangement, but directing their wrath at Gilmore was misguided.

While I can empathize with that frustration (as I was exasperated at multiple points during last season, too), especially when you look at Gilmore’s shooting numbers (5-of-26 3P; 12-of-27 FT), you have to see the bigger picture here.

Carter Gilmore was just doing whatever he could to help the team, no matter how foreign it was to him. “To take on a role he was unfamiliar with…it just shows you how much of a team guy he is. We over me. That mentality he has every day whether it’s film, practice, or weights,” Klesmit mentioned.

Badgers Coaches, Teammates Know What Gilmore Brings to the Table

Sitting in front of Greg Gard at Media Days, you could tell that he has an admiration for Carter Gilmore and what he did last season.

“I think when you’ve got guys that are committed to the program and put their self-interest secondary, that’s a good place to start,” the Wisconsin basketball head coach said when I asked him about Gilmore. “I think Gilly is a great example of a kid that just keeps working. He loves being a Badger, and he’ll do anything he can to help the program be successful.”

Coming into this season, the Wisconsin Badgers have way more depth on the roster than last year. Every player from last year (sans Jordan Davis, who transferred, amicably, to Illinois State) is back, and five new players were brought in to bolster the squad.

One, St. John’s transfer, A.J. Storr, is the one most likely to contribute right away after he had a successful freshman year with the Red Storm. However, there are also a pair of freshmen bigs, 6-foot-11 and 220-pound Nolan Winter and 6-foot-9 and 245-pound Gus Yalden, in the fold.

“This is maybe the deepest team I’ve had. Our practices have been terrific, just on how competitive they’ve been,” Gard noted.

Winter and Yalden will probably play some backup frontcourt minutes as freshmen, but who can say how many? Hell, not even Coach Gard knows the answer yet. “There may be experimentation well into the season with lineups because I see it being that competitive.” You may be wondering, where does that leave Gilmore?

“We talked about other guys that improved, [Gilmore’s] a guy that’s improved. He’s added weight, he’s bigger, he’s more physical and just the experience. He’s a confident player now. What will his role be? I don’t know yet. I’ve got a lot of decisions to make, which is good from a coaching standpoint because the players are making it really hard on me.”

(If I could interrupt my, uh, own post here: Chucky Hepburn while trying to hold back laughter, said at one point that Gilmore “looks like he just got out of the penitentiary” and is “one of our strongest guys.”)

Wherever Gilmore ends up in the rotation, it seems likely that he’ll make sure he does everything possible to help Wisconsin men’s basketball win.

“He does the little things on the court that nobody notices, but we notice as his teammates. So, we’re all proud of him, and we all have got his back & we’ll support him through whatever. We know that he’s going to leave it 110% on the floor, and that’s what we all love about him,” starting point guard Chucky Hepburn opined.

His contributions going “beyond the box score” was a sentiment about Gilmore that was repeated on Media Days. “I think what Carter does, a lot of the work goes unnoticed whether that’s in practice or in games,” Klesmit said, just like Hepburn did.

It is tough as a Wisconsin basketball fan to look at the box score and see that a player only scored two points or only grabbed one rebound, but when everyone involved with the program is saying a player is contributing…you’d best believe that it’s true.

I would love to see Carter Gilmore get some more “box score stats” this year because he is easy to root for, and I think he has the ability to do it. However, based on his teammates holding him in such high esteem already, I don’t think Gilmore will care too much as long as he’s helping the team he loves get back to the NCAA Tournament.

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