MADISON, Wis. — When Camren Hunter stepped into Dane County Regional Airport to meet Wisconsin assistant coach Sharif Chambliss after 11 p.m. Thursday, he had no idea what to expect. He arrived straight from a campus visit to Saint Louis and had only begun communicating with the Badgers’ coaching staff two days earlier. For all he knew, Madison was a middle-of-nowhere town, not too dissimilar from his previous stop at Central Arkansas.
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Hunter expressed as much to Chambliss when he wondered aloud whether there might be any restaurants open near campus. As Hunter recalled, Chambliss met the query with a laugh.
“Bro, do you not know where you’re at?” Hunter said Chambliss told him.
Over a late-night stop at Ian’s Pizza for a slice with buffalo and blue cheese sauces, Hunter learned not only what the city was like, but what Wisconsin basketball could offer. It was too good for Hunter to bypass, which is why he told coaches by the end of his short visit Friday that he was committing to the Badgers. Hunter, who has two years of eligibility remaining, publicly announced his decision Sunday.
“I woke up at the hotel and saw it was basically on the lake,” Hunter said. “It kind of just caught me off-guard. I was just like, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful out here.’ But the thing that really got me is how the coaching staff truly does believe in me. They did a ton of research before they even called me.”
The first month of Wisconsin’s offseason had largely been filled with disappointing news, with the departures of four scholarship players to the transfer portal, including starters AJ Storr (Kansas) and Chucky Hepburn (Louisville), as well as a few high-profile portal target misses for the program. The hope is that Hunter’s addition can begin to quell some of that unease and fill an important piece to the puzzle for Greg Gard’s roster next season.
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Hunter, a 6-foot-3 guard from Bryant, Ark., started all 30 games for the Bears as a true freshman in 2021-22 and was named the Atlantic Sun Conference freshman of the year and a first-team all-league selection after he led the team in scoring (14.1 points per game), assists (3.4) and steals (1.5).
He again earned first-team all-conference as a sophomore when he averaged 16.9 points, 3.9 assists and 1.5 steals while ranking third on the team with five rebounds per game. Hunter scored in double figures in 27 of 30 games, with a career-high 33 points against Queens. Hunter did not play last season due to a Jones fracture in his left foot but said he had been able to participate fully since January and spent the end of the season working with the scout team.
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Hunter said Wisconsin coaches view him as both a point guard and someone who can play off the ball as more of a scorer, depending on the situation, perhaps alongside point guard Kamari McGee. Hunter described himself as a physical defensive player who could defend the 1 through 3 positions. He is a left-handed player whose ability to break defenders down off the dribble and create scoring opportunities at the rim with strength and quickness stood out at Central Arkansas.
According to CBB Analytics, 31.9 percent of Hunter’s field goal attempts during his sophomore season came from within 4.5 feet of the rim, which was by far the most of any area for him. More than half of his shots (51.7 percent) were taken in the paint. One area that needs improvement is his 3-point shooting because he connected on just 31.1 percent as a sophomore despite taking more 3s than anyone on his team. Hunter said Wisconsin’s coaches want to make life easier on the court for him by surrounding him with shooters, which can allow him to create.
Hunter said Chambliss began following him on social media last Sunday and then reached out to him on Tuesday. Chambliss informed him about Wisconsin’s point guard situation with Hepburn entering the portal the previous week.
“He basically was like, ‘Man, we just lost our PG,’” Hunter recalled. “‘We’re going to re-do this roster just a little bit if we could get you. We’ll put you around shooters.’ It was basically a rundown of how they see me. There was immediate interest. Five minutes after that, I was on the phone with coach Gard. Coach Gard talked to me for about 35 to 40 minutes right away. We just hit it off immediately. They said, ‘How fast can you get up here?’ I told them and made it work.”
Hunter entered the transfer portal last year and briefly committed to Butler before opting to return for another season at Central Arkansas. He entered the transfer portal this time in March after Central Arkansas coach Anthony Boone was fired. Hunter said he was in the process of setting up visits to Florida State and Butler but canceled those trips before he left his Wisconsin visit.
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Hunter noted the run-and-gun offensive style of Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz, whose Indiana State team went 32-7 and played in the NIT final last season, greatly appealed to him. But the opportunity to play in the Big Ten for Wisconsin and be developed under Gard won out.
Hunter said he was impressed with the fact that Gard has been at Wisconsin for more than two decades as both a head coach and an assistant, which showed Hunter how much the program meant to him. He cited the fact that both Chambliss and assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft had once played for the Badgers. Hunter also took note of the fact that most of his initial conversation with Gard wasn’t even about basketball. Hunter shared that he had endured a difficult year, which included the deaths of two close friends, as well as his biological father.
“He was like, ‘Man, this could be your family here,’” Hunter said. “‘You’ll be away from home, but we’re going to take care of you. You don’t have to be alone in this thing.’ He genuinely cared about me as a person, and that caught my attention right away.”
Wisconsin still has a couple of scholarships available and will continue to be active in the transfer portal following some notable whiffs. Former Omaha forward Frankie Fidler, who was high school teammates with Hepburn, visited Wisconsin but committed to Michigan State. Former Stanford forward Brandon Angel, a Badgers target out of high school, committed to Oregon. And former Texas point guard Tyrese Hunter, a native of Racine, Wis., committed to Memphis.
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Given all the discussion in recent weeks about NIL, the portal and Wisconsin’s ability to retain players, Hunter was asked whether NIL played a role in his decision to join the Badgers.
“Nah, I come from Central Arkansas,” Hunter said. “It was what I feel like the best situation was for me on the court. Saint Louis, yes, both schools gave packages. Yes, Wisconsin’s might be bigger. But that had no play.
“The historical success in a program like Wisconsin basketball, Wisconsin’s program in general, football, it’s a winning program. They basically wanted me to drive the ship up there. So it was hard to not do that outside NIL. Yes, I will be taken care of, but I never really had any conversations about that. I was so focused on on-the-court stuff.”
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Hunter said he expects to be a different, more complete player than the one who last played in a game in February 2023 because of how much time he has put in since he returned from injury. He has no concern about how his game will translate to a bigger conference against better competition. Wisconsin’s coaches are banking on him meeting that expectation.
“I’ve always played against the best of the best and grew up in AAU playing on the circuit,” Hunter said. “So it’s nothing new. Every night in the Big Ten, I’ll be perfectly fine.”
(Photo: David Jensen / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
