Wisconsin basketball recruiting: UW adds in-state walk-on to 2022 class

Luke Haertle from Oconomowoc is the latest high school QB to join the men’s basketball team.

Monday was a busy recruiting day in Madison apparently. The football team got a commitment from a 3-star LB and the men’s basketball team received a verbal commitment from in-state guard Luke Haertle (Hartland) out of Lake County Lutheran. According to Evan Flood at Badger247, the Badgers offered Haertle a preferred walk-on spot when he came to visit for the game against Green Bay earlier this month.

Heading into his senior basketball season Haertle, who stands around 6-foot-4 and weighs around 200 pounds, is looking to continue his excellent run at Lake County Lutheran. Last season he helped lead the team to the D-3 state title game, which they lost to St. Catherine’s (Racine), so there is still one more obstacle for Haertle to…hurdle.

During his sophomore season Haertle averaged 20.1 ppg, 10.5 rpg and 4.6 apg on his way to all-conference honors. As a junior, Haertle was named WBCA First Team All-State for D-3 after averaging just under 25 points per game with 10.4 rpg and 4.5 apg. He was also, just recently, named Wisconsin co-offensive player of the year in football (with UW QB commit Myles Burkett), proudly continuing Wisconsin basketball’s long and storied tradition of having a team stocked with former quarterbacks (D’Mitrik Trice, Brad Davison, Jonathan Davis, etc.).

Haertle definitely has a football player’s mentality when driving the lane, often initiating contact and then being strong enough to finish through it. He has a compact, repeatable jumper that should translate pretty easily to the Big Ten. While he is clearly athletic, he isn’t an above the rim player and will do most of his damage from the perimeter or after battling down low for an offensive rebound.

There weren’t many pass highlights in the video above, but the ones that were in there were impressive. He seems to know not only where his teammates are on the court, but where they are going as well. I don’t know if he has the ball-handling ability to be a lead guard, but he will provide good secondary play-making from an off guard position.

Flood notes in his article on Haertle that he counts Carter Gilmore as a long-time friend who helped show him that the path to playing time at UW was attainable as a walk-on.

Haertle joins 3-star SG Connor Essegian (Albion, Ind.) in the 2022 recruiting class.