Greg Gard Sees a "Competitive" Roster with New Transfer Additions

MADISON, Wis. — Greg Gard is having to learn to juggle plenty of forms of technology in this new era of college basketball recruiting.

Speaking from his office Thursday, Gard had his printer working overtime to print the latest tally of the players in the transfer portal until the machine ran out of paper, his computer working at full capacity, and him on his office’s landline phone, keeping his cell phone nearby as he waits for important phone calls.

It’s the task that has consumed him since the middle of March as he prepares for his ninth season at the helm of Wisconsin basketball.

“We’re always looking to recruit,” he said. “It’s a never-ending process.”

There’s no question that Wisconsin’s roster has improved since its season ended last month in the NIT Semifinals with a 20-15 record. The Badgers have lost only reserve guard Jordan Davis to the transfer portal and replaced him with Noah Reynolds, a 6-foot-3 guard who averaged 14.5 points per game while shooting 48.1 percent from the floor last season at Wyoming.

“When you’re looking at improvement, that can be a very wide net you cast with that word,” Gard said. “The primary focus is still the guys who are here coming back, them getting better physically, mentally, with what they can do on the floor. The transfers that come in, how can they raise your bar? It’s improvement via addition.”

Later in the day, Wisconsin’s roster improved further with the addition of St. John’s freshman wing A.J. Storr, a versatile scorer who was named to the Big East’s All-Freshman Team last season. Gard couldn’t comment on Storr, who hasn’t signed all his official paperwork, but there’s no debate that he saw Storr as a key piece to building depth at a position that lacked bodies last season.

“It’ll be competitive,” Gard said. “We’ll work through that in the summer and the fall, but I think to have some depth to create competition will always raise the bar. You’re always looking to take it up a notch or two. When I say we have to get better, that request gets assigned to everybody, myself included.”

Gard never used the words “rebuild” or “overhaul” when talking about his young roster struggling to close out wins during the home stretch of last season. But there’s no question that improving the roster’s performance, efficiency, and depth was in the back of his mind.

Speaking to the media following a disastrous January, a month that saw the Badgers go from 11-2 on January 3 to 12-8 at month’s end, Gard said that the current construction of the roster wasn’t built to have a lot of possessions to outscore teams, a result caused by early departures to the NBA, graduation, and a mix of good and bad results in the transfer portal.

When asked in mid-February about the depth and development at forward moving into next season, Gard said the Badgers must “get bigger, more experienced, stronger, more athletic,” next season and will need to use the portal to address it.

Evidenced by UW’s penchant for prolonged scoring droughts, including a nine-minute one that ended its season, adding experience at every position became a priority, including an athletic guard who could get into the lane and score at the rim. Reynolds was identified as somebody who checked a lot of boxes: competed at a winning high school program, plays with a sense of toughness, possesses a ‘chip on the shoulder’ mentality, shoots a high overall percentage, and has a skill set that can still be polished.

Born in Green Bay and attending high school in Peoria, Ill., Reynolds played in a total of 42 games for the Cowboys, He started 10 games last season and scored in double figures in 12 of his 19 appearances, including a season-high 30 points against Texas A&M-Commerce.

Reynolds was leading the team in scoring in late January when he suffered a third head injury in six months, including two in a seven-game stretch that caused him to be shut down for the final five weeks of the season. Gard said Reynolds’ medical history was vetted and cleared early in Wisconsin’s recruiting process of him.

“It’s like any other injury, there’s a process that he goes through (to get cleared medically),” Gard said. “I don’t view it any differently than a sprained ankle or a separated shoulder. That’s part of athletics. He’s good to roll now. As long as you are cleared for your return, that can happen to anybody at any time. We’ve had other guys who have had multiple ones over the course of their careers, and we talked about it. He’s good to go.”

Wisconsin is believed to have one more scholarship available to use on a transfer portal player, a number Gard couldn’t firmly commit to because of the now fluid nature of college rosters. The Badgers continue to monitor entrants into the portal, which remains open until May 11.

“I’ve gotten asked a lot how the roster is going to look (for next season). I don’t know, ask me in October,” Gard said. “We’re a long ways from being set in terms of who will be on the roster because we have a lot of time between now and then. Not because I anticipate one thing or another. In the time we’re in, there’s a lot of fluidity and a lot of movement.”

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