Matthew Mors' 'Dream Came True' in Committing to Wisconsin

While watching the 2015 Final Four matchup between the undefeated Kentucky Wildcats and the Wisconsin Badgers, Ryan Mors remembers his son telling him and his wife the following:

"’I would love to play for Wisconsin someday.’"

"He said, ‘I want to play in the Final Four, and I want to be able to beat teams like Kentucky and play against Duke and I'd love to do it as a Wisconsin Badger,'" the elder Mors told AllBadgers.com on Wednesday. "He was sold on the Badgers that night in watching them beat Kentucky, so he kind of had his mind set that if that was something that could happen in his career that he'd love to get that opportunity."

Going back in time to early April 2015, that would place Matthew Mors nearing the end of his sixth grade year. That was before the seventh grade, where he began his first year as a high school varsity player, before emerging as a Division I prospect, before becoming a four-time all-state performer and a two-time Gatorade state player of the year.

"Well at the time, I just loved seeing how well that those guys played together," Mors said on Wednesday. "It was something that I just saw immediately that I could be a part of. ... I just saw myself being there in the future already at that young age, being a Wisconsin Badger and seeing Wisconsin across my chest.

“Obviously my dream came true, and I'll get to play for them one day. That can’t come soon enough.”

Mors eventually committed to Wisconsin last September and is one of three 2021 recruits that make up a class currently ranked second in the nation according to 247Sports composite rankings.

A four-star forward by the same recruiting service's composite rankings, Mors recalled contact starting with Wisconsin either going into or after his eighth-grade year. Before that, however, the Yankton, S.D., native played varsity the year prior.

How can a middle school student play at such a high level so early? Under rules of the South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA), seventh and eighth graders can be allowed to play on high school teams.

Himself a former girls varsity high school basketball coach when Matthew was younger, Ryan Mors watched his son excel on the court at an early age through middle school. He received the opportunity to become an activities director at Yankton High School when Matthew was in fourth grade, and the family moved to the city in Southeastern South Dakota that sits a stone's throw from the Nebraska state border.

Fast forward to the summer between his sixth and seventh grade year, Mors took part in a middle school camp organized by Yankton boy's basketball coach Chris Haynes. That quickly led to an invite to take part in the high school camp for the rest of that week. The young kid impressed to the point where he was then asked if he would like to join the high school squad at a team camp at Creighton.

“So he went with the guys down to Creighton for a team camp, literally a week or two after being a sixth grader and did really, really well down at Creighton," Ryan Mors said. "We came back from Creighton at the team camp, and Coach Haynes at that point talked to me again and said, ‘Hey, the way he played and our guys really liked having him on the court with them, I think we'd like to have him play high school basketball as a seventh grader.’"

As Haynes previously told AllBadgers.com last week, having a middle school student play varsity ball at their class in the state of South Dakota "is unprecedented."

Being the activities director of the high school his son would play on, Mors admitted he was in an awkward position and requested the district's superintendent to make the call. Eventually, it was approved.

According to Matthew, he knew that season would be a challenge but that it would be the best thing for him going up against older and stronger players. Mors' scoring stats back that up, as he exploded from his seventh- to eighth-grade seasons. His points per game average nearly tripled from 7.7 to 20.6.

"I think that all-in-all, that just shaped me into the person and player that I am today because I was able to face a lot of adversity at a young age," Mors said. "That turns into my skills improving and getting so much better for my eighth grade year."

"Then after that, I knew that after my third year, how much the hard work and stuff would pay off so I just kept working really, really hard after every single season. It seems like after every year, I just want it more and want to keep winning and want to win championships, and that's what I'm always going to want. That's what's always going to be most important."

Mors remembered being really nervous the first time speaking with Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft, as it was the first coach he had talked to. With Krabbenhoft himself a South Dakota native who previously played at Sioux Falls Roosevelt, that connection and relationship kept building, which then led to speaking to head coach Greg Gard.

He believes "everything got solidified" during his official visit last September, which was the same time a certain point guard from Nebraska made the trip east to Madison.

"Chucky (Hepburn) and I, we went out to Coach Gard’s house and with the whole team," said Mors, who has also played AAU basketball for SD Attack. "We were all there, and we just hung out together, and we got to eat together, and we pretty much did everything together that night. I was able to talk to everyone just like they're my family, and I knew from that point on that there's no other place that I could possibly go because my heart was at Wisconsin.”

In fact, Mors had decided to commit on the way home from Wisconsin, which wound up being a big weekend for the Badgers with a couple of oral pledges.

“On the way home from that official visit, I was talking to Chucky and he's like, ‘What do you what do you think about the visit? What do you think about Wisconsin?’" Mors recalled.

"I was like, ‘Pretty good. I like them a lot.' He's like, ‘I think I'm gonna commit,’ and I was thinking the same thing. But after he said it, then I said it, too."

Hepburn publicly announced his verbal commitment to Wisconsin in the early evening of Sept. 29, while Mors waited just about two hours later to make his decision known.

Along with Schaumburg, Ill., forward Chris Hodges -- like Hepburn and Mors, a four-star recruit by 247Sports composite rankings -- UW received an early core of 2021 standout recruits to its class.

“(Chucky and I) live about two and a half, two hours from each other, but we've seen each other in AAU stuff and camps, and then at these college visits and stuff," Mors said. "Then so we've been talking for a while now. Then it just kept growing and growing and growing. Then we took that official visit together, and then we both committed so that's something that I think both of us are never going to forget.

“Then Chris, we've been talking to him, too, and building that relationship because that's what's most important, just to get that relationship started early with all of us. Just recently, we were on the Zoom call with us three and then Coach Gard, so we've been talking and just make sure that that relationship continues to grow.”

Heading into his senior season at Yankton -- what will be his sixth on the varsity team -- he already holds esteemed honors. He currently is South Dakota's Class AA all-time leading scorer (2,127 points and counting). He has claimed first-team all-state accolades in his first three years of high school (and even saw a second-team all-state nod as an eighth grader). The past two years, he has been named Gatorade state player of the year.

Along with working on his ball handling skills, mid-range shooting and post game, Mors also adjusted to becoming more of a leader on the court his junior season.

"This year, it was up to him as junior and an upperclassmen to be the leader," Haynes said last week, "and we really saw some of those attributes, those leadership attributes really starting to grow and come out in him, so obviously we're going to need that from him again next year as a senior."

Along with adapting to working through double and triple teams, Mors still managed to average 19.4 points per game and shot 51.4% overall. He also pulled down 8.2 rebounds and dished out 2.9 assists per contest before the COVID-19 pandemic cut short the chance for Yankton, which earned a No. 1 seed for the state basketball tournament, to work towards a Class AA title.

From a high school administrator's point of view, Ryan Mors believes the greatest part of his job is watching his student-athletes perform regardless of sport. For the past five years, he also has seen that through a dual lens of being a proud parent and the activities director.

“From the time Matthew's been a seventh grader to now, going into a senior year, our crowds, we fill the gym every night and people are excited to come and see what we have going on in our basketball program, and it's just been really fun for the community," Ryan Mors said. "So for me as the AD, it's been fantastic to watch how his career has evolved from that standpoint.

"It seems just like yesterday we had that meeting with the superintendent and the head basketball coach talking about him coming up as a seventh grader, and here we are on the verge of him being a senior in high school. It's amazing how fast this whole thing has gone.”

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