Wisconsin football recruiting: two new offers go out from Paul Chryst and co.

Plus: some transfer portal news and Wisconsin commits winning awards

Recruiting is the lifeblood of any major college athletics team, but following it closely as a fan can sometimes be difficult and can often be time consuming. We’ll try and condense all the recruiting news you can use into this bi-weekly (sometimes more) post. It’ll include updates on current commits, including stats from their high school games, as well as news on players the Badgers are still pursuing. Let’s get down to business!

New offers

• 2023 3-star (247 Sports standalone) WR Joshua Manning (Lee’s Summit, Mo.) received an offer from the Alvis Whitted and the Badgers early this week. Manning also has offers from Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Nebraska.

Standing at 6-foot-3 and weighing 190 pounds, Manning has great size for a wide receiver. While he isn’t rated by the 247 Composite yet, the 247 standalone rankings list him as the No. 38 WR in the nation and No. 7 player in Missouri. During his junior year, Manning had 1,194 all purpose yards and 12 touchdowns in only 10 games.

Manning has long strides and reaches his top speed quickly, often taking little bubble screens all the way to the house after getting a head of steam. He is able to high point the ball and win jump balls regularly against smaller defensive backs. Not sure about his route running because, well, a lot of the plays called for him seemed to be, either those screens, or “run fast and be tall” type fly routes. A player with intriguing size like this on the outside would be nice for Wisconsin to have and, currently, there is no reason to think the Badgers aren’t his best offer.

• 2024 4-star ATH Quinton Martin (Belle Vernon, Pa.) also received an offer from Wisconsin earlier this week. Martin also has offers from Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Virginia Tech and West Virginia in the early stages of his recruitment. According to his 247 profile, he has already taken a number of unofficial visits to State College, so one would imagine that he is pretty high on the Nittany Lions.

Martin stands at 6-foot-2 and weighs 180 pounds and also doesn’t have a Composite ranking yet because the 2024 class hasn’t been evaluated enough times. However, his 247 Sports rankings are: No. 40 player overall, No. 7 ATH overall and No. 2 in the state of Pennsylvania.

Based on his Hudl tape, Martin plays running back and safety for Belle Vernon. Not sure what Wisconsin is recruiting him for, but my guess would be running back as depth there is always needed and since he is class of ‘24, sitting behind Braelon Allen for multiple years won’t be an issue.

New offer to top Badgers target

• 2022 3-star ATH Koen Entringer (Walled Lake, Mich.) has been getting a bunch of impressive offers recently, making it more difficult for Wisconsin to reel him in. Michigan, Boston College, Iowa and Syracuse are all making pushes for Entringer. Hopefully with the recent commitment of Walled Lake teammate Aidan Vaughan to Wisconsin, he can get in Entringer’s ear a bit and sway him.

Bobby April putting in work

• 2023 4-star LB Tackett Curtis (Many, La.) is one of the top prospects in his class and the fact that Wisconsin is considered one of the favorites to land him is a credit to all of the work that April has put in. He has traveled down to Louisiana multiple times and even convinced Curtis, on his family’s own dime, to make the trip up to Madison this year. This would be a huge feather in the cap for both April and Wisconsin if Curtis ends up committing to the Badgers.

Transfer portal news

• Former Wisconsin Badgers OLB Izayah Green-May announced that he is heading just a bit south to play his last season for former Wisconsin RB coach Thomas Hammock at Northern Illinois. The Huskies just won the MAC Championship and are a great landing spot for Green-May.

Wisconsin commits winning awards

• On Tuesday morning, it was announced that 2022 3-star QB, and Wisconsin commit, Myles Burkett was named the Wisconsin Gatorade Player of the Year. Hunter Wohler and Leo Chenal are also recent winners of the award.

Per the Gatorade press release:

The 6-foot-1, 200-pound senior quarterback led the Sabers to a 14-0 record and the Division 1 state championship this past season. Burkett passed for 3,427 yards and 36 touchdowns, completing 71 percent of his attempts. He also rushed for 335 yards and four scores. In a 38-17 win over Sun Prairie High in the state title game, Burkett passed for a Division I state championship game record 276 yards and three scores. He was the 2021 Wisconsin Football Coaches Association Offensive Player of the Year.

• While this isn’t an “award” per se, 2022 3-star SG Connor Essegian is now the all-time leading scorer at his high school, Central Noble, in Indiana. Essegian, the lone scholarship commit in UW’s 2022 class, was in town over the weekend to take in the win over Marquette.

Early Signing Day

• It’s next week, holy crap! Wednesday, Dec. 15, to be exact, is the first day that football players can sign their national letters of intent. If you are new to the site, or caring about recruiting, you should know that it will be a very busy day around here. We’ll have more info for you next week on what to expect!