Wisconsin Football Trying to Flip Penn State Running Back Commit

This past week, Luke Fickell and the Wisconsin football coaching staff handed out a new scholarship offer to Kiandrea Barker, a four-star tailback in the 2025 recruiting class.

Blessed to receive an offer to university of Wisconsin🔴⚪️ @CoachPhilLongo pic.twitter.com/2N5PCFy5bl

— Kiandrea Barker (@KiandreaBarker) May 5, 2023

That tidbit of information is more intriguing when you consider that the offer made to Barker out of The Woodlands in Texas went to a player already committed to Penn State in the 2025 recruiting cycle.

Barker, a 5-foot-11, 190-pound RB, is a high school teammate of 2024 Wisconsin football commit Mabrey Mettauer, who gave his verbal commitment to the Badgers last December.

The industry-generated 247Sports Composite rankings have Barker as the No. 172 recruit in the 2025 class, the No. 18 running back, and the No. 28 prospect to hail from Texas.

As it stands, he has offers from Florida State, Mississippi State, Miami, Missouri, Ole Miss, Pitt, SMU, TCU, UCF, and UNLV.

Can Wisconsin Football Flip the Four-Star Running Back?

From what I’ve heard, Wisconsin football is relatively new in Kiandrea Barker’s recruitment, and Penn State was considered one of his dream schools.

That said, there are still two years before he steps foot on campus, so there is plenty of time for Luke Fickell and running backs coach Devon Spalding to form a relationship and work to get him on campus. It also doesn’t hurt that they’ll have his QB1, Mabrey Mettauer, in his ear, helping recruit the speedy tailback to RBU.

It’s not all that difficult to sell the Wisconsin football program to running backs when you’ve rolled out a laundry list of star tailbacks such as Ron Dayne, Montee Ball, James White, Melvin Gordon, Jonathan Taylor, and more recently, Braelon Allen.

If Wisconsin truly wants to enter the race for Barker, there is more than enough time to complete the flip. However, flipping someone from a storied program like Penn State will be challenging.

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