WBB: Badgers add high-potential forward to roster from Big Ten rival
Shay Bollin, formerly of Illinois and Duke, is the latest player to join UW via the transfer portal.
On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team announced the signing of forward Shay Bollin from the transfer portal. Bollin, who missed all of last season with a back injury, started her collegiate career at Duke before transferring to Illinois for the past two years.
Bollin was a four-star recruit coming out of high school but has found herself behind other talented players on the depth chart at both Duke and Illinois while also dealing with lingering health issues. A fresh start in Madison, featuring a clean bill of health, could be exactly what she needs to find success on the court.
"I'm beyond excited to begin this next chapter at Wisconsin," said Bollin. "From the moment I connected with the coaches and players, it just felt like home. I can't wait to grow both on and off the court, and chase big goals while representing the Badgers."
Shay Bollin Fast Facts
Height: 6-foot-3
Position: forward/wing
Eligibility: two years remaining (although she did graduate from Illinois, so perhaps it’s only one?)
Previous School(s): Illinois/Duke
Hometown: Raynham, Mass.
Fun Facts: No. 33 ranked player in the 2022 recruiting class per espnW; dad played basketball at Colgate and mom played basketball at Ithaca College; mom, Laurie, was Shay’s AAU coach too
Shay Bollin Fast Stats
Career College Stats (two seasons)
GP/GS: 37/0
MPG: 6.6
PPG: 2.3
RPG: 1.1
APG: 0.4
SPG: 0.2
BPG: 0.1
TOPG: 0.4
FG: 32-of-71 (45.1%)
3P: 11-of-38 (28.9%)
FT: 4-of-7 (57.1%)
Shay Bollin Scouting Report
A 30,000 foot view comparison if you don’t want to read more than one sentence? Bollin hasn’t really played enough in college to garner a decent comparison, but I think that former Illini teammate Brynn Shoup-Hill and former UCLA (and current pro in Germany) forward Lina Sontag could provide us with a blueprint for what Bollin can bring to the table. While that was just one sentence, it begged a number of questions that I think this niche women’s college basketball newsletter is perfectly equipped to find the answers.
First things first, I have some serious concerns about Bollin’s injury history. While I also have no doubts that she has worked incredibly hard to rehab and get back on to the court, sometimes the body doesn’t care what the mind wants. Her injury history is lengthy:
missed junior season of high school due to medial patellofemoral ligament (MPFL) reconstruction on her right knee
missed senior season of high school due to the same surgery on her left knee
missed all of last season due to a lingering back injury
The Illinois women’s basketball page has an excellent story/interview with Bollin from when she transferred to Champaign and it goes in depth on her upbringing and injury history. I highly recommend taking 10 minutes to read it.
One of the main points (re: her surgeries) is that due to growing so quickly at such a young age, Bollin suffered from patellar subluxations which means that her kneecap would pop and dislocate from its socket. While she knew she would eventually need surgery to fix it, she hoped that she could put it off until after college. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic she took the opportunity to have the surgery as a high school junior to try and miss as little basketball as possible.
Again, read the piece from Jackson Janes on Illinois’ website. It is well done.
Now, presumably, Bollin has been cleared to play by Wisconsin’s medical staff and so I am inclined to believe that she’ll be ready to roll on Day 1 in Madison. Let’s continue this post under that assumption so I don’t have to continually type “if she’s fully healthy” after every piece of analysis, ok? Ok.
Standing at 6-foot-3, Bollin infuses a healthy does of height into UW’s roster. I wouldn’t characterize her as a traditional post player like Serah Williams or new transfer addition Gift Uchenna, but Bollin should provide matchup issues for opposing teams all the same. She attempted a healthy amount of threes (57.1% three-point rate, 86th percentile nationally) two years ago, but she was also 10-of-14 on field goals at the rim.
While her sample size is prohibitively small, that is the exact type of shot diet I like to see from a wing/stretch big/taller player. Bollin fills a role that the Badgers have lacked in recent years and will spread the floor so players like Uchenna can operate closer to the basket with fewer bodies in her way.
Bollin is the type of low-usage/high-efficiency player that teams crave and if she can keep her three-point percentage above 34% with more minutes than she’ll be one of the most underrated portal pickups in the conference. Her advanced defensive stats are also promising but, again, we don’t have a huge back catalog of evidence since she hasn’t played in over a year.
Since we don’t have that, I used Bart Torvik’s handy website and searched for similar players to Bollin to see if there was an educated projection to make for her in an expanded role. I found two players to whom Bollin compares favorably:
Brynn Shoup-Hill, 6-foot-3, wing/stretch big, Illinois
Lina Sontag, 6-foot-3, stretch big, Freiburg (1. Damen-Basketball-Bundesliga) and UCLA before that
Shoup-Hill, who just so happened to be Bollin’s teammate at Illinois, transferred to the Illini from Dayton with her head coach Shauna Green ahead of the 2023 season. In her three years in Champaign, Shoup-Hill was a low-usage/high-efficiency poster girl. Take a look at these stats:
never had a usage rating higher than 13.5
never had an offensive rating lower than 102.7
never had a box plus/minus lower than 4.2
shot 32.4% from deep on above average volume, but 81.2% from the free throw line (career free throw rate above 30%)
more valuable on defense than offense per box plus/minus
Shoup-Hill was also an average rebounder, a below-average passer, and turned the ball over a bit too much, but her defensive and timely shooting contributions were plenty to make her a valuable piece of the Illini rotation.
In the 2024 season, Shoup-Hill averaged slightly more minutes than Bollin did but in 2023 and 2025 she played 55.7% and 71.1% of Illinois’ minutes respectively. Those happened to be her two best seasons in her career too. If you look at her shot diet from 2024, it looks strikingly similar to Bollin’s.
Shoup-Hill (2024 season)
13-of-19 at the rim
11-of-39 from three
only six other field goal attempts
Bollin (2024 season)
10-of-14 at the rim
11-of-32 from three
only seven other field goal attempts
In 2025, Shoup-Hill played far more minutes and had a high box plus/minus, a higher offensive rating, cut down on her turnovers, and had lower usage than in 2024. This is the path that Bollin should be charting for the upcoming year.
Across the pond, Sontag is a German national who played for two seasons at UCLA but never really carved out a significant role for the Bruins. Before this past season she left Westwood and returned home to Germany to play professionally. She played in three games in the 2024 Paris Olympics and has also played for the senior German national team in multiple EuroBasket events.
Last year Sontag played in 14 games for Freiburg in the DBBL and averaged 6.7 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 3.4 apg, 1.2 bpg, and 1.1 spg in 23.1 mpg. She shot more threes than twos (and hit them at a 34.9% clip) while also blocking an astonishing 40% of the shots that Freiburg blocked as a team. She is (right now) a better rebounder and passer than Bollin but the shooting and defensive profile is quite similar.
On April 21, I wrote the following:
“Wisconsin has nine players on the roster and, with both 2025 freshmen decommitting, can bring in up to six more for next year. Here is how I would rank the positions UW needs with their current roster construction:
veteran, with starting experience, point guard
stretch big
backup point guard (multiple years of eligibility remaining)
wing (defensive)
wing (shooter)
best player available on UW’s board, regardless of position lol”
Since then, Robin Pingeton’s Badgers have:
brought veteran starting PG Ronnie Porter back from the transfer portal
signed stretch big Shay Bollin from Illinois
There are only two of my requests remaining! A defensive stopper on the wing and then one more Rotation Player At Any Position are all that are left and Pingeton has led me to believe that she’ll be finding the correct fits sooner rather than later.