Recruiting Madness Continues

One day after receiving his dream offer from the University of Wisconsin, Sheboygan Lutheran's Sam Dekker pledged to play basketball for Bo Ryan's Badgers. Dekker became the first member of Wisconsin's 2012 recruiting class with his verbal commitment on Tuesday.

Dekker, now 6'7", was a scoring machine (25.5 ppg) last season as a sophomore after growing four inches. A knock on him as a prospect is the level of competition he faces during the high school season as a Division 3 team in the Central Lakeshore Conference, so it will be interesting to monitor his development. Dekker has enjoyed an impressive AAU season thus far, rising to among the top two or three players in Wisconsin in the 2012 class.

The Badgers also offered their first 2013 tender to 6'1" point guard Bronson Koenig. Koenig just completed his freshmen season at La Crosse Aquinas back in March, averaging just under 15 ppg. He is the second-ranked rising sophomore in the state according to Wishoops.net.

Considering Koenig's offer is one of the earliest ever handed out by Bo -- only two months behind J.P. Tokoto's last spring -- it's safe to say the staff is pretty enamored with the kid's abilities.

It also is another example of Bo's willingness to forgo the NABC guideline regarding offering scholarships to players prior to June 15th after their sophomore year. If memory serves, Bo was up front from day one that a soft guideline was going to be impossible to enforce and thus, potentially detrimental to programs that follow the guideline in lock-step. Some schools run through the dog-and-pony show of promising to offer as soon as the NABC guideline allows (ahem, North Carolina .. or Michigan under John Beilein), which is basically the same thing as offering except they get to pat themselves on the back for following a quasi-rule.

: : :

In other news, Tom Izzo is staying put at Michigan State "for life." A very drawn-out, tense affair for Spartan fans, but a good end result for the Big Ten.