Gus Yalden NEW VIDEO! Baby Jokic DOMINATES AAU Competition!! https://t.co/TsYnPAI5iz via @YouTube
— Joey House (@JoeyHouse14) February 23, 2023
Highlighting the incoming freshmen class of 2023 is Gus Yalden, a 4-star recruit out of the national powerhouse La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana. Affectionately known as “The Bus”, Gus is currently a 6’8″, 240-pound center.
Yalden’s high school career has been a bit nomadic. He burst onto the scene after his freshman year at Mater Dei H.S., in Santa Ana, California. Mater Dei, ironically, is the alma mater for incoming wide receiver transfer C.J. Williams.
He had such a successful freshman season that he started garnering offers from a plethora of schools, Stanford, Illinois, Utah, and Wisconsin to name a few.
In order to pursue better competition, he transferred to the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida for his sophomore year and then the Asheville School in North Carolina for his junior year.
The La Lumiere Lakers play in the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference, which is considered by many to be the toughest high school conference in the nation. This seemed the next logical destination for the upcoming senior-to-be.
Routinely playing against the best high school competition in the nation, Yalden is second in the conference in scoring with 16.6 points per game and 4th in rebounding with 6.3 boards a game.
Because of the high level of competition, he has been facing all season Yalden, who’s also been dubbed “The Baby Jokic”, should be the second consecutive Hoosier native, after Connor Essegian, to make an impact on Wisconsin basketball.
Perhaps just as important, Yalden is already embracing the Badger environment and expressing his strong desire to move to Wisconsin.