IW QA with Whitefish Bay Coach Joe Wieland

IW: What type of player is Booker, and what do you see him doing at the next level?

Wieland: I think that he’s a little bigger version of the running back they had this year, Anthony Davis. Booker has stood next to him, and he’s a little bigger version of him, with all the speed, power as a high school running back. He weighed between 195-200 pounds this year, that’s a pretty big kid. He was as big as four of our five linemen. He was not just the focal point of our offense. He was our one legitimate playmaker. We had some other kids, but everyone put eight guys in the box to stop him. As far as him taking over games, he was very rarely was ever tackled by one man. It constantly took two men to take him down. So he’s not just a sprinter, where you get his jersey and you drag him down. You never saw him get dragged down. He has phenomenal balance and power. He’s a pretty special running back.

Obviously he lettered four years at our school. Even as a freshman, he rushed for 600 yards, and we threw for 2,300 yards his freshman year. He just gets the job done. I don’t even know how many of his 60 touchdowns were over 50 yards, so he’s just an explosive kid. He went to Purdue’s Invitational Camp last summer. He went down to that. It was a Midwest invitational camp, and he had the best time there (4.45). (Brian) Calhoun was down there, some kids from Ohio. So he doesn’t have the track stats yet, because he’s not really a track kid. A football player doesn’t go 100 yards in a straight line. When he’s done the early meets, the 40, the 50 and the 60, he’s always done well in those, because from 0-30 there’s no one as fast. That’s what he really focused and worked on from last year, that 40-70, trying to get some strides, get out, because that wasn’t his running style because you don’t run like that very often in football. Where you get up to 40 yards going full speed, and you have to start accelerating through that. That’s the one phase he’s working on, is that top end speed. From 0-40, you’re not going to find a kid much faster.

IW: What other offers did he have?

Wieland: Well people really haven’t become too involved with him because they knew pretty much from the beginning he really wanted to go to Wisconsin. Nebraska was interested. I don’t know how much you know, but his grades are still a concern, of where he’s going to be at. I think that obviously scares some teams away, because teams don’t want to commit to someone from Wisconsin who might not even be eligible to play. So I think Wisconsin has made the commitment to him, that whatever we need to do, we’re going to help Booker out.

Whitefish Bay High School is a northern suburb of Milwaukee. For the past two years, Whitefish Bay has had the highest composite ACT scores in the nation for a public school (25.4 is their average). The problem with that is, for a kid like Booker who comes from…Booker has lived with me on and off through his four years of high school. He’s had a pretty tumultuous family background. He’d come to me at practice one day and say, `A bullet went through my window last night. Can I stay with you for a couple of nights?’ What are you going to say? Yeah, of course. And so, he’s had some of those things, where he’s had kind of a tough upbringing compared to some of the kids he’s sitting in class next to. When you talk about competition for grades and things like that, his grade point is overall a 2.0, but his cores are a little low. Well, his GPA is 2.0 in the school and that ranks him 180 out of 200 kids, because that’s the way our school is. So when he gets to college, he’s going to be fine.

Most of our kids, when they go to Wisconsin, their grade point goes up, it doesn’t go down. At our school, a 3.8 is the cutoff for the kids that are in the top 25 percent, that get to go to Wisconsin academically. So for him, high school has been a good preparation, but unfortunately, the way the grades are skewed and things like that, it’s been tough for him to become academically eligible for college. So he’ll be fine once he gets there. He’s going to have a place to stay every day, food and someone to help with school. He’s going to be great. We just have to get him there.

IW: What does he have to do to qualify?

Wieland: I don’t know exactly, and I’d rather not comment for his own privacy, because some people here take it as, `Well there you go. There’s a dumb (kid) that shouldn’t even be here. He’s just lucky, he plays football.’ Well there’s more to it than that, so I don’t like to spread that kind of stuff. I know he’s close. He’s very close. He just took the ACT again, and if he focuses on his school, he should be okay and be able to qualify. But that’s not a guarantee. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Really, the ball is in his court and it has been for four years.

IW: Do you anticipate him redshirting?

Wieland: I don’t know. If he’s eligible, he could start. I mean, I know that Davis kid is good, but the indications are from the coaches I’ve talked to, not necessarily the Wisconsin coaches but coaches that are recruiting from other places and even high school coaches in Wisconsin are saying he’s as good as the kid at Wisconsin. I mean, I’ve watched Wisconsin games and seen the huge holes that kid is running through, and Booker has had very few big holes like that. So we’ll see. I think he can push for a spot. I think he’s that good of an athlete.

IW: Do you think he’s better than Brian Calhoun?

Wieland: I’ve never seen Calhoun play. And I’ve never even seen them in the same building together. I know he’s bigger than Calhoun, from what (Stanley said). I saw Pierre Rembert play as a junior, and Booker looked better than him on tape, but until you stand on a sideline and watch a kid, it’s pretty tough. But I think he’s the best running back in the state by far. I think Wisconsin is a good match because he needs someone that is going to help take care of him as a person too. I think he’s pretty excited and happy to be there too.