Takeaways from Saeed Khalif's pre-Signing Day discussion on UW recruiting

The 2021 recruiting cycle has been anything but normal, but for Wisconsin, it has pushed through and excelled to acieve its highest-rated class in the Rivals.com era.

Wisconsin director of player personnel Saeed Khalif spoke with a group of reporters via Zoom on Monday afternoon on a number of topics ranging from the challenges faced in building a class during the COVID-19 pandemic and assessing talent down the road, to the work of a new UW assistant and the potential of looking in the transfer portal.

Here are some of BadgerBlitz.com's takeaways from the nearly half-hour chat.

The 2021 class went through -- and many have heard this word before this year, unprecedented -- times. The NCAA halted official and unofficial visits to meet with staff in extending the recruiting dead period a few times.

Khalif noted that the "face-to-face" aspect and getting recruits to the UW campus was the most altered by the events of this year.

“Boots on the ground is always a winner," Khalif said. "We got a good campus to show off and a good city to show off. It's a surprise to people who have never been here, so getting them here kind of puts the icing on the cake, because you can talk it up until they actually get here, and they go, ‘Oh my god, it’s everything you said it was.’"

Khalif acknowledged that "early identification was huge" for Wisconsin regarding the 2021 class and its recruits, believing that "about 80% of them were on campus, one time or the other."

When players are able to come to UW, Khalif mentioned the "big surprise" is that Madison -- which according to United States census website has an estimated 2019 population of 259,680 -- is "actually a city."

“I think they think they come in and land in a Podunk town, and outside of the buildings on campus, there's no other surrounding city," Khalif said. "So we make a big deal that we're surrounded by the city, but most of what you need for your college experience is within a 20-minute walk of campus. I think that's been huge for us, understanding the services that's available on campus, the entertainment components that’s right here on campus, as well as being able to go to the capitol to get those things, have been big."

What about the other estimated 20% who were not able to get to Wisconsin?

“The other crew, it took some real virtual ingenuity to convince them that this was a place to choose without getting here," Khalif said. "With the help of some really good, creative people in our video department and in the recruiting department putting together the graphics and the videos and the message -- what we call 'intentional messaging' -- that kind of helped drive that whole recruiting process for those guys."

For those 20% of the recruits that never made it to UW to visit, Khalif explained that he challenged them "to find a place that's going to have a similar balance of green space between the lakes and the other things that are surrounding us and urban portions of it." Khalif cited the ability to go out on State Street, or one could go fishing out on Picnic Point off of Lake Mendota.

Regarding just what they hoped to deliver to recruits and their parents in the virtual setting, Khalif discussed how "other than touching the actual people and eating the cheese curds, we tried to give them everything virtually."

"We’re going to give you an academic meeting, we're going to give you a strength and conditioning [meeting]," Khalif said. "We're going to show you the facilities. We're going to hit you with the highlight tapes. If State Street is a feature, we're going to show it to you."

Khalif also acknowledged the time span of which he has to work. Instead of having potentially four to six hours to spend with them in-person, the program has them for 45 minutes at the most to retain people's attention spans.

“I had it between 24 and 33 minutes, because after a while that thing is going to fade, and I become a talking head," Khalif said. "So we try to do enough to make them want to do it again. So once we get them on campus, we want to get them back. Same thing with the video. We want to show just enough to want to do it again."

Khalif then discussed the "business" end after all the "fun, hype stuff." That includes class, school, meetings, and the ability to talk with current Badgers.

“We've had opportunity to have a players’ panel," Khalif said. "The players get on. They just ask players, 'Tell me your experience? Tell me what it's like to play early? Tell me what it's like to admit early?'

"So all the things we would do when we were trying to get them here physically, we're trying to give to them virtually without boring them to tears."

When discussing what the program tried to emphasize, emulate and showcase recruits and their parents in the virtual setting about the campus and city, Khalif bragged about the staff and their work.

“These guys are phenomenal," Khalif said. "I say, ‘Hey, guys, I want to show them what it's like between the lakes and the Memorial [Union] Terrace. They'll put together a video, and then we'll have parents on their crying. The type of cinematography that they have done and the things that they have been able to put on video and in graphics are phenomenal.

“Even when our coaches get on and see it, they're blown away, because they don't see it the same way I see it or the recruiting staff or the video staff see it. They're talking to kids, and they're in coach mode. But when they have to sit through the Zoom experience, and I share the screen and a video, I'm getting texts like ‘Whoa, where did you get that from?’"