Like football, the Wisconsin basketball team has a solid recruiting class joining the program next season. The 2021 class has four members and is currently ranked 31st in the country and fourth in the Big Ten, according to 247Sports’ team recruiting rankings. Headlining the class is forward Matthew Mors (Yankton, SD), and guard Chucky Hepburn (Bellevue, NE).
Both Mors and Hepburn have been nominated to the prestigious McDonald’s All-American Game.
In his career, Mors has amassed more than 2,000 career points. He started playing on Yankton’s varsity team as a seventh-grade student. He is also the Class AA all-time leading scorer in South Dakota. Mors was also named the Gatorade South Dakota Player of the Year during his sophomore and junior seasons. In his junior season, Mors averaged 19.5 points per game and 8.5 rebounds per game.
Chucky Hepburn has also had a very nice high school career. He considered the second-best prospect in the state of Nebraska, but I think it’s a small gap to the top. Hepburn actually won the 2019-2020 Gatorade Player of the Year award in Nebraska as a junior. He averaged 17.7 points per game, 6.1 assists and 4.6 rebounds per game.
He led his team to state championship that same year, defeated Sallis’ Millard North, 64-62. He is looking to repeat in his senior campaign. According to MaxPreps, Bellevue West 20-2 and ranked 22nd in the entire country. Hepburn is averaging 15.6 points per game along with 8.7 assists per game and 4.0 steals per game.
The McDonald’s All-American Game has been a showcase of the state’s top talent at the high school level since the late 1970s. The Wisconsin basketball team has had just three players play in this game. Rashard Griffith (1993), Sam Okey (1995), and Brian Butch (2003) are the only future Badgers who have been selected.
In 2012, Sam Dekker had a decent shot at making it, especially since he was considered a top-20 player in the country, but he was snubbed from the honor.
Having players make the McDonald’s All-American team is not only cool for the players themselves, but also provides a boost for future recruiting for the program. The more McDonald All-Americans you can recruit, the more will want to play for you.
We’ll see if either Mors or Hepburn make the game. If they do, it just goes to show how well Wisconsin basketball has done with recruiting as of late.