Wisconsin Basketball: Freshman forward Taylor Currie leaves program

Wisconsin Basketball forward Taylor Currie has decided to transfer after just one season in the program.

It has certainly been an eventful offseason so far for Greg Gard and the Wisconsin basketball program.

At the end of March, freshman point guard Tai Strickland announced that he would be transferring out of Madison and has since landed at Temple. A few weeks later, Marquette stars Sam and Joey Hauser decided to transfer, with Wisconsin emerging as one of the top three contenders to land the duo’s services.

The latest roster development for the Badgers came Tuesday, with Jim Polzin of the Wisconsin State Journal reporting that freshman forward Taylor Currie has entered the NCAA Transfer Portal and will leave Wisconsin. According to Polzin, Currie is planning on attending Mott Community College in Michigan for next season.

Given the timing of Currie’s decision, one has to wonder if Wisconsin’s recruitment of the Hauser brothers was the catalyst for the move. While Polzin did report that he had begun considering a transfer long before the talented brothers became available, I wouldn’t be surprised if the strong possibility of Wisconsin adding two proven studs to the frontcourt who would unquestionably gobble up loads of minutes in the future played a significant role in Currie’s final decision.

While Currie still had a very long way to go in his development and likely wouldn’t have gotten on the floor for another year or two at the earliest, you can’t help but be disappointed in how things worked out here. At the time of his commitment to Wisconsin, Currie represented a pretty solid recruiting win for the Badgers.

Though he concluded his prep career as a 3-star prospect ranked outside of the Top 200 in the 247Sports composite rankings for the 2018 class, Currie had at one time been ranked considerably higher than that as a recruit in the class of 2019 and was once committed to Michigan. However, Currie decided to reclassify into 2018 and subsequently de-committed from the Wolverines. He quickly picked up offers from Xavier and Wisconsin and ultimately chose to play for the Badgers.

As with Strickland, I thought Currie could have had a very high ceiling in Madison: he is exactly the type of skilled, stretch big that has historically thrived at Wisconsin after a few years in the program to develop. Nonetheless, it was certainly far from a guarantee that everything would click for Currie with the Badgers. It will be interesting to see if that ultimately happens wherever his career takes him following his JUCO campaign next season.

With Currie’s departure, center Joe Hedstrom is now the only scholarship player from Wisconsin’s three-man 2018 recruiting class that’s still with the program. While the freshman big man from Minnesota has some intriguing tools and could certainly emerge as a major contributor for the Badgers a couple of years down the road, as of now, it’s safe to say that the 2018 recruiting cycle may go down as one of the worst for Wisconsin in recent memory, taking into account the transfers of Currie and Strickland, the Tyler Herro debacle, and missing on Joey Hauser the first time around.

The Badgers are now down to just nine scholarship players for the 2019-20 season.