Men’s basketball recruiting battles between the Gophers and the Badgers have typically come down to Minnesota natives over the years, but that’s not the case with IMG Academy four-star guard Amari Allen.
Gophers and Badgers have official visits set up with four-star recruit Amari Allen
Amari Allen, a 6-7 Wisconsin native who plays at IMG Academy, says Gophers coach Ben Johnson has been recruiting him the hardest, but the rival Badgers are in the mix, too.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
July 12, 2024 at 3:20AM
Allen spent the past two years turning himself into a top-100 talent at a prep school in Florida, but he’s from a Wisconsin town near Green Bay called Kaukauna.
The 6-7, 195-pound senior scheduled an official visit with the Gophers on Aug. 29 and Wisconsin on Sept. 14.
Gophers coach Ben Johnson and assistant Jason Kemp made Allen a top priority in the 2025 class after offering him a scholarship nearly two years ago.
“They’ve just been recruiting me the longest and the hardest,” Allen told the Star Tribune. “I’ve always felt pretty connected with them. They first started recruiting me in September going into my junior year. They’ve been pretty consistent since then.”
Allen took his second unofficial visit to the U in mid-June to get another close look at the program.
“He’s really, really invested,” Allen said about Johnson. “He’s real engaged and the energy’s really good. There’s no bad energy with anyone on the team. It was great to see that atmosphere around the practice facility.”
The Gophers have sold Allen on developing into a combo guard at the college level. They see his potential impact as a freshman similar to Cam Christie, who was selected last month by the Los Angeles Clippers in the second round of the NBA draft.
“They brought up the Cam situation a lot,” Allen said. “We’re both bigger guards. They let him play as a true freshman. He played around 30 minutes a game, so they let him play through his mistakes. They’re saying I would be able to learn by being thrown into the fire. Just being able to develop in games.”
The Badgers have an advantage as Allen’s home-state Big Ten program. He remembers watching former NCAA player of the year Frank Kaminsky lead Wisconsin to the Final Four in 2015.
“They’re actually the first college team I had ever seen play,” Allen said. “Just being able to see them since I was young is kind of cool. My recruitment is starting to pick up with them. They joined later on, but there’s still time for them to get into the mix.”
The Badgers and Gophers both are expected to host 6-11 four-star Cretin-Derham Hall senior Tommy Ahneman on the same official visit as Allen in late August and mid-September. Ahneman, who transferred from Fargo West in North Dakota, plays AAU basketball for Howard Pulley.
Johnson and his Gophers staff will follow Allen and Ahneman closely during the July evaluation recruiting period. This week, Allen is playing in South Carolina with the Power Five AAU program in the Adidas circuit.
Once the AAU season concludes, Allen looks forward to visiting the Gophers first to see what the fan atmosphere is like at Huntington Bank Stadium for the U football opener vs. North Carolina next month. There’s no timetable currently for when he plans to announce his college decision.
“Once I’m ready, I will commit,” he said. “If that’s on a visit somewhere and I feel like that’s the right place for me to be, I would commit. There’s no set time. I just have to feel the place is right and the time is right.”
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