Top-10 national recruit Kon Knueppel visiting Virginia Thursday

By Jerry Ratcliffe

One of the nation’s top 10 basketball recruits, and Virginia’s No. 1 target, Kon Knueppel, is in Charlottesville for his second look at the Cavaliers.

It has been a rigorous week for the 6-foot-5 shooting guard from Milwaukee, Wisc. He took a three-day visit to Alabama last weekend, visited the Wisconsin Badgers on Tuesday, now Charlottesville, then ends his list of official visits on Friday at Duke.

While Alabama was a late entry into the race for Knueppel, the Crimson Tide pulled out all the stops last weekend, taking Knueppel and other recruits to the Alabama home football game with Texas, and even had him scrimmaging against the ‘Bama basketball team during his visit.

Knueppel, who goes by “K2,” or Konny, to his parents, because of his father, also Kon Knueppel. The elder Knueppel was a college basketball standout, as was his mother, Chari Nordgaard Knueppel, who remains the all-time scoring leader at Wisconsin-Green Bay, which also happens to be the alma mater of Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett.

In fact, Bennett was a teammate of Chari’s brother, Jeff Nordgaard, in 1992 (Jeff’s freshman year, Tony’s final year in the program), both playing for Tony’s father, Dick Bennett.

According to one recruiting industry source, who spoke with the Wisconsin site “Badger Notes,” Virginia’s Bennett is “pulling every connection under the sun” to land Knueppel, one of the nation’s best shooters and scorers.

The Bennett name, because of Tony and Dick, is a huge name in the state of Wisconsin, and certainly there are tons of connections all over the state, including Milwaukee, where Knueppel plays at Wisconsin Lutheran High School.

A 5-star prospect, Knueppel is ranked the No. 9 overall recruit in his class by On3, No. 15 by Rivals and No. 21 by 247Sports.

Knueppel isn’t expected to announce his commitment until late September or early October.