College coaching teams will have a difficult job sifting through a transfer portal that will easily exceed a thousand players in the next month. Fortunately, not every player will be a total stranger to the Wisconsin coaching staff.
According to ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, St. Thomas (MN) redshirt freshman Nick Janowski, a talented guard from Pewaukee whom Wisconsin offered in high school, is entering the transfer portal.
Janowski was named to the first-team All-Summit League and the conference’s freshman of the year, averaging 16. 1 points, 5. 1 rebounds, and 2. 1 assists in his first college season.
Janowski was a four-star prospect by ESPN. com, ranked among the top 125 seniors in the country by both 247Sports and Rivals, and was a top-150 choice by On3, who ranked him among the top 25 shooting guards in the class by all four major recruiting services.
During his high school career at Pewaukee, he scored a school-record 2,297 points, 606 rebounds, and 357 assists. His team won three state titles, finished as a runner-up once, and had a 106-14 record.
Janowski averaged 30. 8 points, 8. 2 rebounds, and 4. 4 assists per game as a senior, with a 53% field goal percentage, 37% 3-point percentage, and 84% free throw rate. He was a Nebraska commitment at the time, picking the Huskers from a scholarship list that included power-conference offers from Georgia Tech, Iowa, Iowa State, USC, Virginia Tech, and Wisconsin.
The Badgers approached Janowski in April 2022, but their interest waned after the squad added point guard Daniel Freitag, who would join a guard group that already included Connor Essegian, Max Klesmit, and Zach Kinziger. Freitag, the program’s highest-rated point guard at the time of his commitment, had a difficult time and saw limited action at Wisconsin before moving to Buffalo last season.
Janowksi attended all of his true freshman games in 2024-25, but eventually redshirted.
Wisconsin intends to prioritize experienced guards during the transfer window, which begins today and lasts 15 days. Not only did the Badgers graduate starting guards Nick Boyd and Andrew Rohde, as well as top reserve Braeden Carrington, but three-year contributor John Blackwell announced that he would be entering the NBA Draft process and the transfer portal.
Currently, the only guards on UW’s roster who played important minutes last season are sophomores-to-be Hayden Jones and Kinziger, but they will be joined by 22-year-old Australian point guard Owen Foxwell and incoming recruits Jackson Ball and LaTrevion Fenderson.
