MADISON, Wis. – A sense of normalcy has started to return to the Wisconsin men’s basketball program, a sensation that head coach Greg Gard hasn’t felt since the spring.
With massive personnel movement on the roster and on the bench, not to mention trying to boost the program’s NIL coffers, returning to the floor to coach basketball is such a breath of fresh air to Gard entering his 10th season leading the Badgers.
“The coaching is the coaching,” Gard told BadgerBlitz.com. “That thankfully doesn’t change.”
What is different is the rapidly shrinking free time over the offseason. Whether making an appearance at an alumni event, doing a speaking engagement, or simply picking up the phone to call boosters, Gard estimated he did some form of NIL connection daily over the summer, tenfold with what he did in previous years.
It’s the new era of college basketball, with freedom of movement for players between colleges in the transfer portal and trying to cash in on Name, Image, and Likeness opportunities in the unregulated free market.
Wisconsin experienced both aspects last season – losing three-year starting point guard Chucky Hepburn (Louisville) and leading scorer A.J. Storr (Kansas) to big NIL deals and seeing another four players leave via the portal.
As a result, Wisconsin integrated five new players into its program during eight summer weeks and have since added two more before team workouts resumed earlier this month.
While there is the usual wariness of how new faces will alter team chemistry, the success in the summer workouts led to a connection and competitiveness in the early weeks of the preseason.
“Eighteen- to 22-year-olds are more adapt and resilient to change than maybe adults,” Gard said. “This is the new era of college basketball. There’s going to be some transient nature to the roster every year, so you adjust and grow with the specific team you have in front of you as much as you can. This group has done a good job of understanding our buy-in. They understand how important the connections and the chemistry are going to be to our success.”
Point guard Camren Hunter (Central Arkansas) and forward John Tonje (Missouri) have begun to play their best basketball during team drills and workouts over the past few weeks, as they have become more comfortable with how Wisconsin’s system operates.
But while Gard has seen Hunter and Tonje play “with a freer sense of mind,” he points to junior wing Xavier Amos (Northern Illinois) as being an early standout.
Making 49.6 percent of his shots and averaging 13.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game in just over 30 minutes per contest last season at Northern Illinois, Amos was targeted by the staff for his ability to make shots at the rim (62.7 percent) and the perimeter (38.5 percent).
But while the fast-paced world of portal recruiting showed Wisconsin enough to have them intrigued, the last three months showed the staff that Amos might be a huge rebuilding piece.
“Xavier has come out the gates from day one and really impressed the staff,” Gard said. “He’s way more skilled from a wing position than what we thought from the short amount of time we had to evaluate him in the portal. He brings more of a wing component to the floor than what we would have probably ever expected.”
While Amos will be one of the noticeable impactful offseason additions, Gard has shaken up his staff to reflect the constantly changing landscape. He hired Isaac Wodajo to be the program’s director of recruiting and scouting, brought former UW center Greg Stiemsma in as the director of player development, and replaced Dean Oliver with Division II head coach Lance Randall as the third assistant.
Believing for the past year that the landscape of college basketball would require him to evolve and adapt his approach to recruiting and fundraising, Gard has received a boost of energy from the fresh voices and perspectives that hope to resonate throughout the program.
“I wanted to put together a staff that I felt could be very comfortable, functional, and effective in this new era,” Gard said. “It meant bringing in a different level of skills and experience. From what I’ve watched so far, it’s been terrific. The wealth of knowledge and experience that the group of coaches bring collectively is good as I’ve been around. We’ve had to adapt on the floor, we’ve had to adapt in the recruiting world, and we’ve adapted to how we’ve structured and deviated some of the responsibilities of our staff. It’s all been positive and impactful.”
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