The transfer portal is open, and the Wisconsin Badgers are players once again, as they look to fill out the rest of their roster following some portal departures this past week.
The Badgers have been quite successful in the transfer portal in recent years, finding a star player in each of the past three seasons. Back in the 2024 offseason, they were able to land AJ Storr, who enjoyed a breakout season in Madison before transferring to Kansas the season after.
In the 2025 offseason, they had an amazing
evaluation with John Tonje, who became an All-American and was one of the best transfers in the country after missing much of the 2024-25 campaign due to injury.
Then, of course, they got Nick Boyd last offseason in a more higher-profile transfer, convincing the San Diego State guard to choose Wisconsin over several other offers. Boyd also enjoyed a breakout season with the Badgers, leading the team with 20.7 points and 4.3 assists per game, while shooting a respectable 48 percent from the field and 36.5 percent from deep.
Wisconsin has also found some quality role players in the portal, such as Austin Rapp, Braeden Carrington, and Andrew Rohde last season, so they’ve shown an ability to build a team from the portal if needed.
That might be necessary this season, as Wisconsin will have to replace Boyd, Carrington, Rohde, John Blackwell, and Aleksas Bieliauskas, who are all either out of eligibility or have entered the transfer portal. That’s quite a bit of production to replace, and Wisconsin currently has six open roster spots to do so.
The Badgers aren’t a top-tier NIL spender when it comes to basketball. So, what has been the key to their transfer portal success?
“Well, [a big part is] our staff,” head coach Greg Gard said when asked on The Mike Heller Show. “I think we’ve done a great job of identifying and evaluating and not just jumping at the flashy name that’s out there because of all the other financial ramifications that come with it. I think we’ve been very intelligent and smart and disciplined about who we approach, knowing what the cost of it is.
“And, we have put some science behind it too. We have some data analytics where we can do a comparison and a translation, run them through a program where we can see if it’s a kid that’s playing at a mid-major school, how does he translate, how does his stats translate. Some translate really well, others don’t translate at all or very well. So that’s not just pulling a name out of a hat or picking the most popular name on Twitter or X.”
A big part of the evaluations is the financial component. Wisconsin won’t engage seriously with potential transfers if they know they’re out of the budget. But the Badgers have a good idea of where players stand and what their resources are, which jumpstarts those conversations as they identify and evaluate players.
“There’s a science that goes into it of really identifying,” Gard continued. “And obviously, you know, the financial piece behind it, you get a pretty good idea if you can be in the game or not, right, relatively soon. And the portal always goes through trends. Like right now, the market’s hot. Yeah, it hasn’t even opened. And it’s a player’s market. I mean, it’s definitely— and it’ll level off and then there’ll be [a jump]. We’ve seen over the years [if it’s] like anything, it’s like stock market waves.”
That logic has proven to be pretty consistent as the portal has evolved. Usually, there’s a race to get top talent and quality players early, which inflates the market as teams want to secure their rosters for the upcoming season. Then comes a wave where the market dips, which is where a team like Wisconsin can use a ‘moneyball’ approach to find the best fits on the court and financially within its budget. At the end, with teams still needing to fill needs, is where you also see the market jump because there aren’t as many talented players as there are teams with needs.
It seems like Wisconsin will take a similar approach this year, initially focusing on retention before going after its targets in the transfer portal. There is a need for scoring, some size, and another quality wing. We’ll see how Wisconsin can fill those holes in the portal.
