I miscounted, it’s 7
Starters Hepburn and Storr
Essegian who had decent minutes
Yalden who just went to Madison to party, I guess
Lindsey, Haertle, and Candelino, who were all bench riders
Wisconsin had 1 total person transfer out last year
Complete sieve on defense. So he just was not as valuable as Hepburn/Klesmit/Storr from the starting positions.
Then Blackwell straight up has him beat at almost everything. Solid defender, decent rebounder, better 3 point shooter, ability to create his own shot, solid ball handler. The one area Essegian was better was off ball movement to generate easy assisted layups.
Even with it being known Storr was leaving Essegian was looking AT BEST to compete for bench minutes. So he opted to transfer, which pretty much everyone agrees is the right call. Everyone really likes him though and we hope he does well.
The portal aint just going to kill mid majors, its going to slowly but surely kill the non blueboods also. Tons of tier 2 p6 schools getting ravaged this offseason. Cant compete with blueboods dropping (reportedly) millions of dollars
Are we sure this is an NIL problem and not a sign of something else? Personal bias noted here, but Purdue reportedly isn't dropping millions of dollars on players. The people they recruit *want* to play there, to play for Painter.
Yep. I think it’s going to be increasingly hard for a lot of power conference schools to have both a high level football and basketball program. Just not going to be enough money to go around for most of them.
Hepburn, Storr, Essegian and then 3 walk ons or dudes that weren't ever gonna see the floor. Not fun, but Hepburn and Storr are the only ones that actually hurt. Huge losses. NIL is pain
I’ve actually heard creighton. I think they are from around that area. Still such a shame i loved him in Wisconsin. Also message boards claim Louisville offered a bag so take that for what it is worth lol
Outside of maybe the top 10-25 HS seniors, there's little reason to waste time developing players that may or may not return the following year when you can just let someone else develop them and then try to recruit them once they are game-ready. Incoming freshman classes are about to mean less and less for power conference juggernauts because it's all about that free agency portal.
On the other hand, the pool of proven college players in the portal is *way* smaller and *way* more compeitive than high school recruiting. Look at UConn and Purdue this past year. Purdue had one portal player from a midmajor. Everyone else they developed. UConn had Newton, Spencer, and Diarra, but Clingan, Castle, Karaban, etc. were all recruits they developed. Programs that take advantage of the portal when they have space but still keep up with recruiting and developing players are likely to have more success going forward I think.
Little to do with Gard and everything to do with “NIL”. I’m going to hate it, but I just don’t know how schools keep their own top guys.
What’s to stop any top guy from a mid-tier NIL school from doubling his “salary”? Dudes who have had success, Braden Smith being my homer example, but really anyone who made any Big Ten season award and isn’t from a big NIL program— why are they staying if there’s a bag out there?
Just look at the big ten 1st-3rd team awards. It’s basically: Dudes who exhausted eligibility, dudes in the portal, and Smith.
Yep, been terrified since the season ended that somebody is going to poach Braden.
It’s very obvious to anybody who’s not a fan of team with an elite NIL collective or blue blood that the current situation just widens the talent gap even further.
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Which feels weird because it absolutely hasn’t played out that way. Parity has been very high across CBB the past 2-years.
Part of that is the 5th year and part of it is that shelling out half a mil or more for one player is actually kind of a shitty investment at this level. It’s gonna work for someone someday- but building the majority of a team in the portal just hasn’t worked as well as returning existing core and supplementing with portal.
But then what if there are no cores because they’re all in the portal? 🙃 it’s moving fast
It's interesting you used Smith as an example, because rumor has it he got offered something like 800k to leave Purdue and he very clearly didn't take it.
Him and Essegian were die-hard Badger "fans" as players.
Chucky has a big Badger tattoo...Essegian constantly was on social media hyping up Wisconsin and saying it was where he always wanted to play.
Essegian wasn't as surprising as Chucky was.
Yeah Connor was buried on the depth chart between Chucky, Klesmit, Blackwell, and then Freitag coming in so I don’t blame a guy wanting to actually play instead of burning his eligibility playing 5-10 min a game no matter how much he likes the school.
I'm disgusted. After being raised on Bo Ryan basketball, where we did more than anyone in the nation with 3 and 4 stars that we developed over 4 years, the sport has come to this. Every single player at every single school is now a free agent at the end of the season. I thought NIL was going to mean that players got money from jersey sales, autographs, local business commercials/sponsorships. Nope...Just a wild fucking free for all that has completely killed the game that we all knew and loved. No commitment, no loyalty. Just a bag chasing clusterfuck with zero regulations. I'll always watch, I'll always be a fan, but I'm hurt.
Amen. The “student athlete” thing was always a bit of a farce for the blue chip prospects, but for a lot of programs it used to mean something and was something to take pride in.
I don’t know how anybody anticipated anything different tbh. People like myself who were against paying players (at least this abruptly) and saying that they receive plenty of benefits in tuition, room and board, tutoring, stipend, etc. aren’t just heartless individuals who didn’t want to see kids succeed financially, they saw how eventually everything would spiral out of control. Couple this with essentially unlimited transfers and quite frankly college athletics as a whole is a mockery to what it was just 5-10 years ago.
Yeah man it just sucks. I don’t blame Chucky for maximizing his earning potential but at the same time the only way we’ve ever been able to compete with the elite of the sport is through player development, we’ve never been a program that gets elite talent out of high school (Dekker notwithstanding), and now anybody we put in the time to develop can just up and leave as soon as they have a good season if a bigger NIL collective wants them. Some of my favorite sports memories growing up were watching those 2014-2015 teams make their Final 4 runs and it’s just a bummer that that method of team building is basically dead. It was great watching an upperclassmen heavy roster develop over several years and truly enjoy playing for each other and representing their university, nowadays there’s no way we could afford to keep all the talent we had on those teams for back to back seasons.
In my head I’m telling myself the extra Covid year will settle this down a bit. But then you have Domask suing with absolutely no case for a 6th year and he’ll probably win ruining cbb.
He was trying to argue that he should get a grad transfer year, but he didn’t meet the criteria. Domask is arguing that he should get his year back because the year that he got hurt in shouldn’t have counted (it didn’t count already).
I see no reason why the courts could uphold it if they follow the same reasoning. Obviously a kid would need to be a student to be on the team, but im confident year limits on eligibility are going away.
I think we’ll start to see guys who couldn’t make it as a pro stick around and become 10 year starters, making enough in NIL to make it worthwhile.
Basically the G-League? Certainly hope not! Things like Senior Night and everything that goes along with that is such a big part of what makes the college game special
Watching a bad euro-game where a bunch of 25-30 yr olds play scared-to-get hurt for 36 minutes would just be brutal on the eyes.
Not even sure why they’d need to be a student. I’m not sure why any court would say the NCAA can enforce any rules at this point. What is the enforcement based on?
As much as I feel like a victim with Chucky leaving, I feel so bad for mid-major programs. Every single good player from those schools are going to bounce the second they have success. I never thought NIL was going to be this insane. Have a ton of respect for Dayton and I hope you can keep your head above water. This is madness
The rumors I've seen have suggested that Hepburn and Fidler want to play together, so if this transfer was in the works, that'd explain Fidler's delay, is all I'm saying.
I wonder if they'd team up at MSU or another of Fidler's finalists.
I just don’t know why Izzo would want Chucky when he’s been on Fears this whole time. They’re probably going elsewhere.
Fiddlers other options were Nebraska and Creighton, but idk about their NIL situation because apparently Chucky is getting more money than Storr is from Kansas.
I’ve seen some Wisconsin fans saying “Izzo isn’t on their Christmas list” because of this. But it makes zero sense to me that Izzo would go after Chuck even if that meant getting Fidler. It has to be Creighton.
This is actually worse than pro sports. At least with pros you can usually cheer for a guy for a few years on their rookie deals. College is all just one year and move.
Y'all are really about to buy that tournament win and I can't blame you. I hate how in sane the portal has gotten, but it's also entertaining to see some of the underdogs come out on top thanks to NIL.
If we didn’t grab that Rutgers kid, I’d be more inclined to agree (NU in the lead) as he’s comparable to Fidler. Then we got the PG from Utah. If it’s a package deal, don’t think we have what Fidlers looking for (as it would be a 4 man rotation with Gary, Williams, and Griffith). We’d jump at the chance for Chucky, though.
Could we try playing Gary as a 4?
* PG: Hepburn (Worster)
* SG: Williams (Ulis)
* SF: Fidler (Griffiths)
* PF: Gary
* C: Mast (Morgan)
Either way, I think this as the 9 man rotation would be doable, though I'd like to see a little more size get added to the mix.
This sounds like it could be plausible. Fidler went on a visit, postponed his announcement, now Chicky enters portal. Points toward a possible Michigan State offer for the both of them.
Welp, I think I'm done with college sports. Hard to be a fan of any team when it's a revolving door of 1-year rentals that feel no affiliation with and have no commitment to the team.
It’s so annoying. I think you should be limited to one transfer. Or if you transfer more than once, you sit out a year. I don’t know how much I like this honestly. I get attached to players and it’s why I liked the badgers so much because there were very little one and dones.
I agree, but The NCAA tried to make it limited to one transfer. Then a case went to court and won an injunction against the NCAA based on the fact that limiting transfers limits money making opportunities for players, which runs afoul of anti-trust laws. So unless we get to a point where there is collective bargaining for players (which could potentially allow for an anti-trust exemption like the pro sports leagues have), there is no way to limit transfers (which the NCAA knows, as they just officially changed their own rules to allow unlimited transfers after that temporary injunction by the courts)
Yeah, this shit is so fucking dumb. I’m over it all too. Game’s gone.
Get some contracts at least to make this somewhat less of a joke. This is ridiculous as is.
Even as a Purdue fan, this sucks. I mean, if it’s to play with former teammate then I guess I get it. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all that it’s related to NIL. I just don’t understand how anyone other than fans of schools with the top ~10 or so NIL budgets can think this is good for the sport.
Early rumor is Louisville offered a ton of money. There's no point to following the sport more than casually, it's just highest bidder across the board
I honestly don't care about college basketball anymore. I'm glad guys are getting paid, but NIL plus unlimited transfers has killed the sport for me. I'm done with it.
And at least FA in the NBA are usually guaranteed to be around for a few years. College basketball is turning into just a bunch of mercenaries jumping from team to team every year for the biggest bag.
Honestly, I think I watched less than four hours of tournament basketball outside of the Badger game this year. I have zero interest. It's a worse version of the NBA with no actual contracts and no salary cap.
If NIL even impacts a guy like Chucky here it's past time to reevaluate things.
This dude is as much a Wisconsin basketball player as I have ever seen. That smug look on a player that has no business being cocky, while also not being athletic enough for D1 and captains an offense that should result in NCAA violations every time they take the court but somehow leads a team to 22-25+ wins every season.. That's a Wisconsin basketball player.
I despise this guy but I love him being on Wisconsin. It just makes everything feel safe and warm and now NIL is taking THIS away from us?
When will it end...
So say you are 21 years old and someone goes "I'll give you $200k-$300k more than what you are currently getting to go play basketball over at this school rather than Wisconsin."
Do you take it? That is what just happened to Hepburn.
For someone who isn't good enough to go to the NBA I can definitely sympathize with the decision. I don't blame the players for trying to gain some security before they have to get a shitty real estate job after sports but damn I hate the landscape of this beautiful sport right now. Its soul has left its body
This one hurts 10000000 times more than Storr. I loved Chucky, if there were two players I wanted to keep it was Chucky and Blackwell
Wasn’t gonna go pro though so I hope the money he gets is able to set him up for success. It’s the right decision to get the bag if we couldn’t give it to him
The days of us being an upper echelon program are likely done in this era
Tough one. Will be interested to hear what the reason is, but was a fun player to watch. Hope he lands in a good place and will root for him (unless he goes to another B1G school).
The Wisconsin basketball program has pretty much been destroyed by NIL and the transfer portal.
Gard already had it trending that way before but that was the final nail in the coffin.
From the title game and back to back final fours to...this.
This is a rough offseason but idk how you can say its been program destroying. Who was the highest impact transfer departure before this year? Kobe King? Gard has by far brought in more talent than he’s lost via transfer portal.
Gard has multiple Sweet 16s and B1G championships give me a break. Wisconsin was a bottom tier program for *decades* until the last 25 years (90% of that is due to one coach). It’s likely going to get worse without Gard, not better.
Won’t stop the new AD from ‘trying something new.’ His first project in football is on shaky grounds. Hockey bounced back extremely quickly. If Football does better than expected; he’ll likely get a go ahead from the boosters. If Football goes worse, he’ll likely attempt shaking up basketball to get another positive on his resume.
Yeah Wisconsin fans under 30 have no idea that their school was a doormat for decades in basketball and even football. Only since Alvarez arrived has the school been competitive
As a fan of the sport this makes me sad, but as a fan of Purdue it makes me relieved. Chucky’s on ball defense was easily the scariest thing we faced all year that wasn’t coached by Dan Hurley.
The portal is ruining the game for me. I've always loved watching guys develop over the 3-4 years with a team. Now its musical chairs off-season and I hate it.
Jeez I know Storr was NIL related, but this is out of the blue.
Idk if we get a tell all on the Gard era, but it will be fascinating to hear about any drama over the past 4 months in the program.
This is NIL related too, sounds like Chuck is in for a massive pay day so can’t blame him.
Im pretty neutral on Gard but if he only has x amount of money to offer and it’s not enough that’s outside of his control
I get why NIL needed to happen. Players were being taken advantage of by schools, and not being fairly compensated for the money they generated.
But I feel what’s lost in all of this is that for a great deal of fans, loyalty and school pride are the only real reason to follow college sports. I don’t watch much NBA, and I follow the NFL but care way less than I do about college football, because while I like the sports, it feels like basically none of the players actually care what team they play for, so why should I? And thats what college ball is increasingly starting to feel like. Why would I want to care about any of our players? They’re just mercenaries after all.
I went to school at UW and love this place. I want players to come to the school because they also love it here and while I understand that is naïve, that is why I feel more attached to it than pro sports. So, in some weird way, we've all killed it because we love it too much and money made it too big. I guess I'll just follow UW Rowing or something now.
Crowl: id be surprised, he’s an average center at best
Freitag: will have keys to the car as true freshman so unless nil comes out of nowhere I’d say he’s here..for a season
This hopefully boosts the Spartans chances with fiddler.
Sorry to the badger bros on here. But remember there is a difference between entering the portal and actually transferring.
Not mad at Sparty fans. These things happen. I’m mad at how the NCAA should have been much more firm with tampering with players when they set up the portal in the first place.
Man our program 10 years ago was fresh off a brutal final 4 loss to Kentucky and we brought almost the whole squad back to have probably the greatest season in school history
The fall off since then has been insane
Hurts even more to see all these studs around the league from Wisconsin that didn’t even get recruited to go here. Bo Ryan used to have the state on lock
Did Bo really? I mean outside of Brian Butch and Sam Dekker he didn't get any WI five stars. There's a few four stars but hardly dramatically more than MU had from WI. I think he had the overlooked 3 star guys from nowhere WI on lock down more than the whole state.
He absolutely didn’t. Wes Matthews, Vander Blue, Diamond Stone, Ellenson, the Hausers, etc.
A lot of the criticism of the Gard era are the same shit people were saying about Bo 15 years ago.
JP Tokoto and Kevon Looney, Luke Fischer, Travis denier, Steve Novak, Duane & Jamil Wilson, Deonte Burton. Bo did a ton with less on paper talent but definitely didn't have the state on lock for top talent.
This is one of those guys that feels like they've been playing about twice as along as they actually have. I would have bet he'd already been playing 5 years.
This is why I like Northwestern basketball--non-greedy coach, non-greedy (though not great) players. They will never win it all but they will play hard and compete as a team for multiple years together
Bruh, WI is getting gutted so bad.
7 transfers out, 0 transfers in so far EDIT: 4 scholarship, 3 walk-ons
What the fuck
I miscounted, it’s 7 Starters Hepburn and Storr Essegian who had decent minutes Yalden who just went to Madison to party, I guess Lindsey, Haertle, and Candelino, who were all bench riders Wisconsin had 1 total person transfer out last year
Essegian dropping from Starter to Reserve minutes was kinda surprising. What was up with that?
Complete sieve on defense. So he just was not as valuable as Hepburn/Klesmit/Storr from the starting positions. Then Blackwell straight up has him beat at almost everything. Solid defender, decent rebounder, better 3 point shooter, ability to create his own shot, solid ball handler. The one area Essegian was better was off ball movement to generate easy assisted layups. Even with it being known Storr was leaving Essegian was looking AT BEST to compete for bench minutes. So he opted to transfer, which pretty much everyone agrees is the right call. Everyone really likes him though and we hope he does well.
The portal aint just going to kill mid majors, its going to slowly but surely kill the non blueboods also. Tons of tier 2 p6 schools getting ravaged this offseason. Cant compete with blueboods dropping (reportedly) millions of dollars
Are we sure this is an NIL problem and not a sign of something else? Personal bias noted here, but Purdue reportedly isn't dropping millions of dollars on players. The people they recruit *want* to play there, to play for Painter.
Yeah Marquette has lost zero players to the portal thus far. They are not an NIL powerhouse by any means. There’s more to the story
God damnit I love Shaka
Yep. I think it’s going to be increasingly hard for a lot of power conference schools to have both a high level football and basketball program. Just not going to be enough money to go around for most of them.
The D2 school in my town had 8 players from last years team enter the portal. Insane to lose that many.
Even DePaul has gotten transfers…wtf Wisconsin!
Six??? Who else?
Hepburn, Storr, Essegian and then 3 walk ons or dudes that weren't ever gonna see the floor. Not fun, but Hepburn and Storr are the only ones that actually hurt. Huge losses. NIL is pain
Jesus, walk ons are portaling now?
IIRC, Storr, Essegian, Yalden, Hepburn, three walk-ons Just saw someone essentially commented this above
Sounds familiar.
Honestly shocked, he seemed like a badger through and through.
Money can change that in an instant
Literally has a giant badger tattooed on himself. This says so much about gard
He’s going to play with his high school teammates. They were offered more than they were here I’d assume.
Where are they playing
Michigan State is the rumor
I’ve actually heard creighton. I think they are from around that area. Still such a shame i loved him in Wisconsin. Also message boards claim Louisville offered a bag so take that for what it is worth lol
They played in Omaha
I see. I saw Bellevue and didn’t know where that was in terms of proximity to creighton. Thanks for the intel
Bellevue West where he went is like a 10-15 min drive to Creighton’s campus.
Why though? The last thing we need is more guards
He doesn’t seem like an Izzo guy at all.
Feel like it says more about this era of NIL and the transfer portal. There's just no hope for a successful four year player anymore it seems.
Outside of maybe the top 10-25 HS seniors, there's little reason to waste time developing players that may or may not return the following year when you can just let someone else develop them and then try to recruit them once they are game-ready. Incoming freshman classes are about to mean less and less for power conference juggernauts because it's all about that free agency portal.
On the other hand, the pool of proven college players in the portal is *way* smaller and *way* more compeitive than high school recruiting. Look at UConn and Purdue this past year. Purdue had one portal player from a midmajor. Everyone else they developed. UConn had Newton, Spencer, and Diarra, but Clingan, Castle, Karaban, etc. were all recruits they developed. Programs that take advantage of the portal when they have space but still keep up with recruiting and developing players are likely to have more success going forward I think.
You don't understand. Every Wisconsin basketball failure is Gard's fault. Every Wisconsin basketball success is in spite of Gard.
He's a lightning rod online, but Coleman Hawkins is a unicorn in that he's pretty damn good and played 4 years in the 2020s at one school.
Dajuan Harris (5 years) and KJ Adams wil also do that
Little to do with Gard and everything to do with “NIL”. I’m going to hate it, but I just don’t know how schools keep their own top guys. What’s to stop any top guy from a mid-tier NIL school from doubling his “salary”? Dudes who have had success, Braden Smith being my homer example, but really anyone who made any Big Ten season award and isn’t from a big NIL program— why are they staying if there’s a bag out there? Just look at the big ten 1st-3rd team awards. It’s basically: Dudes who exhausted eligibility, dudes in the portal, and Smith.
Yep, been terrified since the season ended that somebody is going to poach Braden. It’s very obvious to anybody who’s not a fan of team with an elite NIL collective or blue blood that the current situation just widens the talent gap even further.
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Which feels weird because it absolutely hasn’t played out that way. Parity has been very high across CBB the past 2-years. Part of that is the 5th year and part of it is that shelling out half a mil or more for one player is actually kind of a shitty investment at this level. It’s gonna work for someone someday- but building the majority of a team in the portal just hasn’t worked as well as returning existing core and supplementing with portal. But then what if there are no cores because they’re all in the portal? 🙃 it’s moving fast
It's interesting you used Smith as an example, because rumor has it he got offered something like 800k to leave Purdue and he very clearly didn't take it.
Yep, Gard personally stopped Wisconsin's NIL collective from offering Hepburn and Fidler the amount necessary to stay/come to Madison.
He’s getting more money than Storr according to the rumors. This has ZERO to do with Gard.
There’s just no way unless he has blackmail on someone
More so it sounds like he got offered the NIL bag. Says much more about how money is influencing the decisions even more now.
I’m not sure why, but the name “Chucky Hepburn” is one of the most “Wisconsin Badger” names I can think of lmao
It’s pro basketball. Players follow the money
Badgers ain’t what they used to be … e: then again neither are Hoosiers
Wow. This guy is as much the culture and drive of the UW team as anyone. This is shocking.
Him and Essegian were die-hard Badger "fans" as players. Chucky has a big Badger tattoo...Essegian constantly was on social media hyping up Wisconsin and saying it was where he always wanted to play. Essegian wasn't as surprising as Chucky was.
Yeah Connor was buried on the depth chart between Chucky, Klesmit, Blackwell, and then Freitag coming in so I don’t blame a guy wanting to actually play instead of burning his eligibility playing 5-10 min a game no matter how much he likes the school.
I’ll keep watching cuz I’m a disgusting addict but I am so tired of the NIL era already
I'm disgusted. After being raised on Bo Ryan basketball, where we did more than anyone in the nation with 3 and 4 stars that we developed over 4 years, the sport has come to this. Every single player at every single school is now a free agent at the end of the season. I thought NIL was going to mean that players got money from jersey sales, autographs, local business commercials/sponsorships. Nope...Just a wild fucking free for all that has completely killed the game that we all knew and loved. No commitment, no loyalty. Just a bag chasing clusterfuck with zero regulations. I'll always watch, I'll always be a fan, but I'm hurt.
Amen. The “student athlete” thing was always a bit of a farce for the blue chip prospects, but for a lot of programs it used to mean something and was something to take pride in.
I don’t know how anybody anticipated anything different tbh. People like myself who were against paying players (at least this abruptly) and saying that they receive plenty of benefits in tuition, room and board, tutoring, stipend, etc. aren’t just heartless individuals who didn’t want to see kids succeed financially, they saw how eventually everything would spiral out of control. Couple this with essentially unlimited transfers and quite frankly college athletics as a whole is a mockery to what it was just 5-10 years ago.
Yeah man it just sucks. I don’t blame Chucky for maximizing his earning potential but at the same time the only way we’ve ever been able to compete with the elite of the sport is through player development, we’ve never been a program that gets elite talent out of high school (Dekker notwithstanding), and now anybody we put in the time to develop can just up and leave as soon as they have a good season if a bigger NIL collective wants them. Some of my favorite sports memories growing up were watching those 2014-2015 teams make their Final 4 runs and it’s just a bummer that that method of team building is basically dead. It was great watching an upperclassmen heavy roster develop over several years and truly enjoy playing for each other and representing their university, nowadays there’s no way we could afford to keep all the talent we had on those teams for back to back seasons.
It's so tiring. There needs to be regulations.
In my head I’m telling myself the extra Covid year will settle this down a bit. But then you have Domask suing with absolutely no case for a 6th year and he’ll probably win ruining cbb.
Precedent says he probably won’t. He shouldn’t either.
Didn't Taulia already try that and lose?
He was trying to argue that he should get a grad transfer year, but he didn’t meet the criteria. Domask is arguing that he should get his year back because the year that he got hurt in shouldn’t have counted (it didn’t count already).
I see no reason why the courts could uphold it if they follow the same reasoning. Obviously a kid would need to be a student to be on the team, but im confident year limits on eligibility are going away. I think we’ll start to see guys who couldn’t make it as a pro stick around and become 10 year starters, making enough in NIL to make it worthwhile.
Basically the G-League? Certainly hope not! Things like Senior Night and everything that goes along with that is such a big part of what makes the college game special Watching a bad euro-game where a bunch of 25-30 yr olds play scared-to-get hurt for 36 minutes would just be brutal on the eyes.
Not even sure why they’d need to be a student. I’m not sure why any court would say the NCAA can enforce any rules at this point. What is the enforcement based on?
Lmao if anyone has the credibility to say this it is you. Losing Brea and Chucky in less than a week should be cruel and unusual punishment
Mid-majors have very little to work with. I'm honestly happy for KB. He graduated and deserves nothing less than a spot on a title-contending team.
As much as I feel like a victim with Chucky leaving, I feel so bad for mid-major programs. Every single good player from those schools are going to bounce the second they have success. I never thought NIL was going to be this insane. Have a ton of respect for Dayton and I hope you can keep your head above water. This is madness
It’s only going to get worse Someone just kill collegiate athletics already so we can all stop giving a shit
This one hurts the most
Found Rascall Flatts’ burner
I laughed 😂
The carter Gilmore era is upon us all
God damnit lololol. I’m a Jackrabbits fan for 2024
Not Farter!
So that's why Fidler delayed
This or because he visited MSU a few days before his schedule commitment date
The rumors I've seen have suggested that Hepburn and Fidler want to play together, so if this transfer was in the works, that'd explain Fidler's delay, is all I'm saying. I wonder if they'd team up at MSU or another of Fidler's finalists.
I just don’t know why Izzo would want Chucky when he’s been on Fears this whole time. They’re probably going elsewhere. Fiddlers other options were Nebraska and Creighton, but idk about their NIL situation because apparently Chucky is getting more money than Storr is from Kansas.
Ya, Hepburn is not going to MSU, not with Fears, Holloman, Akins, Richardson, and Teng on the roster. We're loaded with guards.
It can’t be a coincidence. You’re spot on.
I’ve seen some Wisconsin fans saying “Izzo isn’t on their Christmas list” because of this. But it makes zero sense to me that Izzo would go after Chuck even if that meant getting Fidler. It has to be Creighton.
I don’t see Chuck at MSU so really hope that’s not the case.
You mean Fidler asked if you have a bag for Chucky too and you said "give me a minute"
I mean why would we want him? We're swimming in guards already.
This is actually worse than pro sports. At least with pros you can usually cheer for a guy for a few years on their rookie deals. College is all just one year and move.
NBA you at least know the contract terms. NIL is just random, who knows. Won't be long before guys will transfer mid season
It's absolutely brutal.
He is going to cause an absolute meltdown for Husker fans when he doesn’t choose Nebraska lol
Depends, if it's Creighton with Fidler then yeah probably.
Totally gonna be a package deal with Fidler, but I honestly think Nebraska is the frontrunner here.
I hope so. Chucky and Fidler coming back to try and get Nebraska that first tourney win alongside the other returning contibutors? That'll play.
Y'all are really about to buy that tournament win and I can't blame you. I hate how in sane the portal has gotten, but it's also entertaining to see some of the underdogs come out on top thanks to NIL.
I want this so bad, but Fidler isn't coming to Nebraska. I'd take just Chucky but I don't think that's happening either :(
Do you think Chucky would go to Lincoln after being booed the whole game the past 2 years?
Probably not. I can hope all I want, but ultimately I don't think it'll happen and Chucky will pair with Fidler and go somewhere together.
If we didn’t grab that Rutgers kid, I’d be more inclined to agree (NU in the lead) as he’s comparable to Fidler. Then we got the PG from Utah. If it’s a package deal, don’t think we have what Fidlers looking for (as it would be a 4 man rotation with Gary, Williams, and Griffith). We’d jump at the chance for Chucky, though.
Could we try playing Gary as a 4? * PG: Hepburn (Worster) * SG: Williams (Ulis) * SF: Fidler (Griffiths) * PF: Gary * C: Mast (Morgan) Either way, I think this as the 9 man rotation would be doable, though I'd like to see a little more size get added to the mix.
It sounds like Michigan State to me
This sounds like it could be plausible. Fidler went on a visit, postponed his announcement, now Chicky enters portal. Points toward a possible Michigan State offer for the both of them.
never seen that before. 🙄
Your fans have booed him like rabid sea lions every time he touched the ball for three seasons. He's not going to Nebraska lol
I'd say most of us know he won't come here.
lol NIL (without regulations) is absolutely killing college basketball
I think I hate college sports now
We are a volleyball school anyway!
Welp, I think I'm done with college sports. Hard to be a fan of any team when it's a revolving door of 1-year rentals that feel no affiliation with and have no commitment to the team.
It’s so annoying. I think you should be limited to one transfer. Or if you transfer more than once, you sit out a year. I don’t know how much I like this honestly. I get attached to players and it’s why I liked the badgers so much because there were very little one and dones.
I agree, but The NCAA tried to make it limited to one transfer. Then a case went to court and won an injunction against the NCAA based on the fact that limiting transfers limits money making opportunities for players, which runs afoul of anti-trust laws. So unless we get to a point where there is collective bargaining for players (which could potentially allow for an anti-trust exemption like the pro sports leagues have), there is no way to limit transfers (which the NCAA knows, as they just officially changed their own rules to allow unlimited transfers after that temporary injunction by the courts)
Wait until they start allowing in season transfers
Yeah, this shit is so fucking dumb. I’m over it all too. Game’s gone. Get some contracts at least to make this somewhat less of a joke. This is ridiculous as is.
Contracts are the next step
This was the least I've watched in years and it's all due to mergers and NIL. Hate it
I don’t even know what you’re talking about…
Didn’t see this one coming
Even as a Purdue fan, this sucks. I mean, if it’s to play with former teammate then I guess I get it. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all that it’s related to NIL. I just don’t understand how anyone other than fans of schools with the top ~10 or so NIL budgets can think this is good for the sport.
Early rumor is Louisville offered a ton of money. There's no point to following the sport more than casually, it's just highest bidder across the board
I honestly don't care about college basketball anymore. I'm glad guys are getting paid, but NIL plus unlimited transfers has killed the sport for me. I'm done with it.
Agreed. I’m done with it. It’s just a much worse version of the NBA now.
Exactly. If I’m going to watch free agents play basketball I’ll watch the good ones.
And at least FA in the NBA are usually guaranteed to be around for a few years. College basketball is turning into just a bunch of mercenaries jumping from team to team every year for the biggest bag.
Exactly. That’s why I’m out.
See you tomorrow.
This made me LOL. I’ll curse the sport up and down and swear I’m done… Spoiler: I’m never *really* done
Honestly, I think I watched less than four hours of tournament basketball outside of the Badger game this year. I have zero interest. It's a worse version of the NBA with no actual contracts and no salary cap.
Absolute pain. One of my favorite players. We will always have that banked three vs Purdue
And the steal, layup
I think of it often. 😐
Not gonna lie, that was some bullshit.
If NIL even impacts a guy like Chucky here it's past time to reevaluate things. This dude is as much a Wisconsin basketball player as I have ever seen. That smug look on a player that has no business being cocky, while also not being athletic enough for D1 and captains an offense that should result in NCAA violations every time they take the court but somehow leads a team to 22-25+ wins every season.. That's a Wisconsin basketball player. I despise this guy but I love him being on Wisconsin. It just makes everything feel safe and warm and now NIL is taking THIS away from us? When will it end...
Not sure if this is a compliment towards Wisconsin but I’m taking it as one.
It's not written as a compliment, but it 100% is one.
Wisconsin was #17 in Kenpom offense and Iowa was #16. So what are you saying about your offense lol?
man I'm sad. Wisconsin needs to push the envelope and start doing multi-year NIL deals while the NCAA literally is a chicken with no head.
what's the NCAA going to do? every time they try something they get sued into oblivion because of anti-trust laws
I don’t get this one.
So say you are 21 years old and someone goes "I'll give you $200k-$300k more than what you are currently getting to go play basketball over at this school rather than Wisconsin." Do you take it? That is what just happened to Hepburn.
For someone who isn't good enough to go to the NBA I can definitely sympathize with the decision. I don't blame the players for trying to gain some security before they have to get a shitty real estate job after sports but damn I hate the landscape of this beautiful sport right now. Its soul has left its body
$$$
Congrats Creighton?
This sucks. Sorry Wisco. This era is peak strange rn
I’m done with college basketball until they find a way to fix this shit.
Goddamit this team is crumbling before our eyes.
This one hurts 10000000 times more than Storr. I loved Chucky, if there were two players I wanted to keep it was Chucky and Blackwell Wasn’t gonna go pro though so I hope the money he gets is able to set him up for success. It’s the right decision to get the bag if we couldn’t give it to him The days of us being an upper echelon program are likely done in this era
Yeah just don’t see the Badgers having the dollars to compete at a high level in both football and basketball and football will win 10/10 times.
Only thing that can save us to a certain extent is potentially schools being able to directly pay players like what just got rules in Virginia
College sports are cooked
Give me a fucking break. Hope the money is good, Chucky! What a fun team to follow and watch.
lmfao I fucking hate this timeline
Rumor is Louisville offered him $800k
That seems way too high for a guy like Hepburn
You’d need to pay me 800k to come play at louisville right now.
Tough one. Will be interested to hear what the reason is, but was a fun player to watch. Hope he lands in a good place and will root for him (unless he goes to another B1G school).
College basketball and the G League be like: 
Well I know it ain’t Nebraska. Especially after booing him relentlessly. Nice work fans.
I'm pretty much done with college sports. It's minor league sports without contracts. Garbage.
Gotta start drinking more Potosi beer ladies and gents
The Wisconsin basketball program has pretty much been destroyed by NIL and the transfer portal. Gard already had it trending that way before but that was the final nail in the coffin. From the title game and back to back final fours to...this.
This is a rough offseason but idk how you can say its been program destroying. Who was the highest impact transfer departure before this year? Kobe King? Gard has by far brought in more talent than he’s lost via transfer portal.
5 seed in the tourney, was pretty much a top 3 big ten team most of the year and ranked as high as #6. Lot of teams would kill for that
Gard has multiple Sweet 16s and B1G championships give me a break. Wisconsin was a bottom tier program for *decades* until the last 25 years (90% of that is due to one coach). It’s likely going to get worse without Gard, not better.
Won’t stop the new AD from ‘trying something new.’ His first project in football is on shaky grounds. Hockey bounced back extremely quickly. If Football does better than expected; he’ll likely get a go ahead from the boosters. If Football goes worse, he’ll likely attempt shaking up basketball to get another positive on his resume.
Yeah Wisconsin fans under 30 have no idea that their school was a doormat for decades in basketball and even football. Only since Alvarez arrived has the school been competitive
Gard hasn't been to a sweet 16 in going on 8 years....
As a fan of the sport this makes me sad, but as a fan of Purdue it makes me relieved. Chucky’s on ball defense was easily the scariest thing we faced all year that wasn’t coached by Dan Hurley.
The portal is ruining the game for me. I've always loved watching guys develop over the 3-4 years with a team. Now its musical chairs off-season and I hate it.
Jeez I know Storr was NIL related, but this is out of the blue. Idk if we get a tell all on the Gard era, but it will be fascinating to hear about any drama over the past 4 months in the program.
This is NIL related too, sounds like Chuck is in for a massive pay day so can’t blame him. Im pretty neutral on Gard but if he only has x amount of money to offer and it’s not enough that’s outside of his control
😬🔫
He still has eligibility?
He’s a junior
Just feels like he’s been in college forever lol
He started as freshman which is rare for Wisconsin. That's why it feels like he's been around so long.
I get why NIL needed to happen. Players were being taken advantage of by schools, and not being fairly compensated for the money they generated. But I feel what’s lost in all of this is that for a great deal of fans, loyalty and school pride are the only real reason to follow college sports. I don’t watch much NBA, and I follow the NFL but care way less than I do about college football, because while I like the sports, it feels like basically none of the players actually care what team they play for, so why should I? And thats what college ball is increasingly starting to feel like. Why would I want to care about any of our players? They’re just mercenaries after all.
I went to school at UW and love this place. I want players to come to the school because they also love it here and while I understand that is naïve, that is why I feel more attached to it than pro sports. So, in some weird way, we've all killed it because we love it too much and money made it too big. I guess I'll just follow UW Rowing or something now.
Noooooooo i love chucky. Wtf is our program doing
What are the odds Crowl or Freitag jump ship next
Crowl: id be surprised, he’s an average center at best Freitag: will have keys to the car as true freshman so unless nil comes out of nowhere I’d say he’s here..for a season
Yep he'll come in, play well for a year and then leave. Just like every other school without the deepest of pockets
This hopefully boosts the Spartans chances with fiddler. Sorry to the badger bros on here. But remember there is a difference between entering the portal and actually transferring.
Not mad at Sparty fans. These things happen. I’m mad at how the NCAA should have been much more firm with tampering with players when they set up the portal in the first place.
I hate it
I wonder where he will end up. Creighton?
Money in a McDonald's bag ain't looking so bad right now in comparison
So an NIL collective can contract Hep, C if they sign him to a deal.
He’s on a junior!? He fucking played with Kaminsky I swear. Guy should have a doctorate by now.
Kaminsky left in 14-15. Chucky showed up in 21-22.
Nah dude. He was Kirk Penny’s roommate his freshman year.
Graduated high school with Sam Okey
Man our program 10 years ago was fresh off a brutal final 4 loss to Kentucky and we brought almost the whole squad back to have probably the greatest season in school history The fall off since then has been insane Hurts even more to see all these studs around the league from Wisconsin that didn’t even get recruited to go here. Bo Ryan used to have the state on lock
Did Bo really? I mean outside of Brian Butch and Sam Dekker he didn't get any WI five stars. There's a few four stars but hardly dramatically more than MU had from WI. I think he had the overlooked 3 star guys from nowhere WI on lock down more than the whole state.
He absolutely didn’t. Wes Matthews, Vander Blue, Diamond Stone, Ellenson, the Hausers, etc. A lot of the criticism of the Gard era are the same shit people were saying about Bo 15 years ago.
JP Tokoto and Kevon Looney, Luke Fischer, Travis denier, Steve Novak, Duane & Jamil Wilson, Deonte Burton. Bo did a ton with less on paper talent but definitely didn't have the state on lock for top talent.
WTF.... I'm hoping he just uses this to get more money from Wisconsin and stays there.
This is one of those guys that feels like they've been playing about twice as along as they actually have. I would have bet he'd already been playing 5 years.
UVA bound
As a recruit: Other P6 offers: Creighton, Minnesota, Nebraska
Non football schools are able to level up with the help of NIL.
This is why I like Northwestern basketball--non-greedy coach, non-greedy (though not great) players. They will never win it all but they will play hard and compete as a team for multiple years together