Future Wisconsin point guard Daniel Freitag has fallen in the recruiting rankings. His current coach says there’s a simple explanation, and it doesn’t involve his game.
By Peter Cameron, BADGER STRIPES
When Daniel Freitag committed to play basketball for Wisconsin this summer, he became Greg Gard’s highest-rated recruit of his near decade-long tenure as Badgers head coach.
The 6’2” Freitag is an impressive athlete, with a combination of speed and power coaches in multiple sports covet. Major college programs in both basketball and football offered him scholarships. Notre Dame wanted him to play wide receiver, as did Wisconsin, Kansas State and Iowa State. The hard-dunking guard also had offers to play basketball for Notre Dame, Virginia, Baylor and Xavier, and others. He said publicly he was considering being a two-sport athlete.
https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4317615640364969 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});Ultimately, he chose to play for the Wisconsin basketball program, citing his strong relationship with Gard, and the fact the coaching staff never offered another point guard in his class. If everything goes to plan, Freitag will understudy for starting point guard Chucky Hepburn in the upperclassman’s final season, then take over as a sophomore.
But Freitag has dropped 45 spots in the Rivals Prospect Ranking, knocking him out of the top 100 in the class of 2024. He also dropped out of the 247 Sports Top 100, which had him ranked as a 4-star recruit when he committed to Wisconsin in June. And he is not a part of ESPN’s Top 100 either.
He had originally been ranked by many as the top recruit in Minnesota in the 2024 class, but now has fallen to third or even fourth, behind his AAU teammates Jackson McAndrew, who chose Creighton over the Badgers, and the 6’6” shooting guard Jack Robison, who will join Freitag at Wisconsin next year.
https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4317615640364969 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});Why the drop in the rankings? Breck High School head coach Harry Sonie said the senior point guard was dealing with a knee injury over the summer.
“I believe that is when his stock started to go down, as it would for any player,” Sonie said to Badger Stripes in an email.
“He’s playing great for us currently and we are loaded with talent and numerous players that are capable of scoring the basketball,” Sonie continued.
Breck sits at 4-0 on the young season, and Freitag is averaging about 18 points per game in the three games he has played.
After attending Bloomington Jefferson High School his first three years, where he broke NBA player Cole Aldrich’s scoring record with 1,618 points, Freitag transferred to Breck, a prep school in Golden Valley in the St. Paul suburbs, for his final year of high school.
It’s not the first time pundits have underrated a Badger basketball recruit.
https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4317615640364969 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});Johnny Davis inexplicably was a 3-star recruit. If you’d actually seen the kid play, his 5-star athleticism slapped you in the face. With all five fingers.
A couple elite Wisconsin high school players in Freitag’s class of 2024 have also seen some movement in the recruiting rankings.
Nick Janowski, a 4-star, 6’4” shooting guard from Pewaukee, who committed to Nebraska over Wisconsin and others, has also fallen out of the Rivals Top 100. He sits outside the Top 100 for ESPN, On3 and 247 Sports as well.
Moving in the opposite direction is Kon Knueppel, the top high school player in Wisconsin. The 6’6” Knueppel from Milwaukee shot up the recruiting boards and sits in the top 25 of all four boards, leading to a late offer from Duke, where he committed in September. Gard and staff had made him a recruiting priority, offering him a scholarship in August of 2021 before his sophomore season, and Duke offered nearly two years later, before his senior season, but the pull of the blue blood was too great.
In other recruiting news
Gard and staff had also hoped to get a commitment from the 7’3” Mount Horeb native Daniel Jacobsen, but in early November the big man chose Purdue, apparently attracted by the success they’ve had developing other centers like likely back-to-back national player of the year Zach Edey, as well as Caleb Swanigan, Trevion Williams and Matt Haarms.
Jacobsen reclassified from the class of 2025 to 2024, and will graduate high school a year early. Don’t ask me how these kids can do that. I wish I had been able to.
Wisconsin offered the giant Jacobsen in August after a campus visit with his parents.
“After a great visit and conversation with Coach Gard, I am very grateful to receive an offer from the University of Wisconsin!” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, in August.
He is from Mount Horeb, but attends a boarding school in New Hampshire that boasts elite high school athletics.
The tea leaves seemed to suggest he would come home, like Gus Yalden the year before, but the pull of Big Man U Purdue was apparently too great.
Jacobsen had a plethora of high major offers including from Illinois and Creighton.
And in other recruiting news
As expected, the #1 recruit in the 2024 class and the projected #1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft Cooper Flagg chose to attend Duke for his inevitable single season of college basketball, committing in late October.
We had hoped his reclassification from the class of 2025 to 2024 would take one more spot at Duke and lead to Wisconsin’s best high school player, Knueppel, staying home at UW instead, but the Blue Devils got them both. C’est la vie.
Badger Stripes is a sports journalism organization that provides in-depth coverage of Wisconsin athletics. You can also follow us on Facebook.
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