Wisconsin forward Gus Yalden enters NCAA transfer portal

After one tumultuous year in Madison, Wisconsin, Badger men’s basketball forward Gus Yalden has entered the transfer portal, On3 has learned.

Yalden never appeared in a game for Wisconsin and wound up redshirting his entire true freshman season. Coming out of high school, though, he was a four-star prospect, the No. 115 overall player in On3’s Player Rankings for 2023, and the No. 4 player in the state of Indiana for his cycle.

Yalden’s year with the Wisconsin program featured a couple of road blocks. In late September, with the season a little over a month away, Yalden was involved in an unfortunate scooter accident which forced him to miss crucial practice time in the lead-up to the team’s opener in November.

That scooter incident came at an unfortunate time, as Benjamin Worgull of BadgerBlitz wrote that the crash in late September “was sandwiched between a misdemeanor citation in September for underage drinking and another in late October for possession of marijuana.”

Shortly after that marijuana citation, Yalden, or the “Gus Bus” as fans refer to him, then took a leave of absence from the program at the start of November, less than a week out from the team’s first game. Head coach Greg Gard said that Yalden would remain in school but leave the team to “address a personal family matter.”

He actually returned to the team within the month and, per Worgull, went to the scorer’s table to check into a game on Nov. 27 but was called back to the bench before subbing in. That was the closest Yalden came to entering game action all year.

Now, after a year on the bench amid some off-court setbacks, Yalden will enter the transfer portal and survey potential new homes. And moving around is no new action for Yalden, who played for three different high school teams in three different states in his sophomore, junior and senior seasons. After a year in Madison, assuming Yalden doesn’t withdraw, he will play for a fifth team in five years.

Despite the circus surrounding Yalden off the court, his teammates did rave about his development in practice.

“He’s been doing a great job,” starting center Steven Crowl said of Yalden’s work in practice throughout the season, per BadgerBlitz.

“Ever since he came in the summer, just learning. I think the big thing is the physicality you got to play with the Big Ten. It may not come right away, it usually doesn’t for big men, but it’s going to come. He’s got all the moves, all the footwork, he can shoot it. He’s doing a great job learning of how to become a good big.”

Sounds like some program could be getting an unearthed gem in redshirt freshman Gus Yalden.