Wisconsin basketball GM explains the Badgers’ team-building philosophy
Wisconsin men's basketball general manager Mark VandeWettering detailed the Badgers’ portal strategy, NIL structure, and roster vision.
There’s a tendency this time of year across college basketball to reduce roster construction down to a spreadsheet. How much money did you spend? Who did you land? Who did you lose? Did you “win” the portal?
But listening to general manager Marc VandeWettering talk about the Wisconsin men’s basketball program’s offseason recently during an appearance on Butchie’s Den, it became pretty clear that the Badgers are trying to build something a little more layered than that in Madison.
Not necessarily flashy. Not always headline-driven. But intentional.
“This time of year, through April and May, is a lot of roster construction,” VandeWettering said. “That’s retention, that’s transfer portal, that’s international, and even high school. All can happen within that window there. It’s getting a lot of contracts negotiated. It’s talking to a lot of the agents, visits, Zooms, all the different things are happening at once.
“It’s really just orchestrating behind the scenes and making sure that the coaches can coach, so that I can handle everything else for them.”
And the reality is, Wisconsin’s offseason really did begin with retention.
The Badgers made keeping frontcourt pieces Nolan Winter and Austin Rapp a priority, understanding just how expensive experienced frontcourt players had become in the portal market. From there, the next tier of continuity mattered too, with players like Jack Janicki, Hayden Jones, Zach Kinziger, and Will Garlock all returning to a locker room that now has enough holdover pieces to teach the culture to the next wave coming in.
That matters more than people think.
“Knowing the capital you have to invest in the team as a whole is key to figuring out the strategy of how you want to disperse it,” VandeWettering said. “There are a lot of different ways to go about this.
“Last year, we went heavy on making sure we had two really good guards, and that worked really well for us. Going into this year, we could see where the transfer market was heading and knew frontcourt pieces in the portal were going to cost a lot. So retaining our frontcourt guys — and retaining them early — became a priority, and we made sure to make that happen.”
Even though college basketball continues to drift toward annual free agency, Wisconsin still, in many ways, resembles what the sport used to look like. There are layers to the roster. Different tiers of expectation. Proven veterans. Developmental pieces. Players expected to help immediately. Others expected to grow into something more over time.
The incoming group reflects that balance.
Portal additions like Eian Elmer, Trey Autry, and Victory Onuetu address immediate needs in the rotation, while the addition of 22-year-old guard Owen Foxwell brings another older, experienced piece to the roster despite not technically arriving through the transfer portal after playing professionally overseas. Meanwhile, incoming freshmen like Jackson Ball, LaTrevion Fenderson, Josh Manchester, and Australian forward Isaac Riddle give the roster some developmental runway moving forward.
And if a few of those younger pieces push beyond the tier they’re currently projected into, the overall floor of this team starts to rise pretty quickly.
