WBB recruiting: UW offers top 2025 CG Ava Black out of New Hampshire

One of the best players in all of New England, Black has been racking up offers this summer.

For a team like the Wisconsin Badgers, getting in early with recruits is paramount to eventually getting recruits to commit. The Badgers don’t have a long, or even short, history of on-court success that a team like UConn or South Carolina or Maryland. They don’t have a ton of brand recognition like Tennessee or Stanford or Notre Dame.

UW needs to identify talent, extend a scholarship offer, and develop a meaningful relationship with a top player in order for them to consider coming to Madison. So far, I think that Marisa Moseley and her staff are doing an excellent job of those first two things.

Last week, 2025 CG Ava Black (Auburn, N.H.) out of Tabor (Marion, Mass.) Academy announced on her Twitter account that she received an offer from Moseley and the Badgers.

Ava Black @Ava_Jaye_Black

After a great call, I'm grateful and excited to have received an offer to play for @BadgerWBB !! Thank you @marisamoseley @katebarnosky and the whole staff for this opportunity!!❤️🤍 @LaurieBollin @BayStateJags @willbecker9597

I couldn’t find a full list of all of her offers so far, and I wasn’t willing to scroll through her entire timeline, but I did find that she holds scholarships from: Holy Cross, Harvard, Rhode Island, Florida Atlantic, Northeastern, Pitt, Georgetown, Boston College, Delaware State, Northwestern, Xavier, BYU, Fairfield, Vanderbilt, Providence, New Hampshire, and, presumably, others.

Black stands at 5-foot-10 (maybe 5-foot-11?) and could play either guard position in my opinion. She plays her grassroots ball for the Bay State Jaguars (most of the players are from the greater Boston area; her hometown is about an hour away) who produced one of my favorite players of the past five years, former Northwestern, and current Dallas Wings, guard Veronica Burton.

I think now would be a good time to watch Black’s highlights from the Under Armour circuit this summer.

Ok.

So, you know how earlier I was talking about how it is kind of difficult for Wisconsin to recruit top-end talent to Madison? Black is seriously a top-end talent and I’d have to assume she’ll be on the radar of the blue bloods shortly, if she isn’t already.

With Moseley, and assistant Kate Barnosky (from New York, played/coached at Tufts, coached at BU), having a bunch of New England ties/experience I could see Black giving the Badgers a long look. I’m just worried that it won’t be enough once your UConns and South Carolinas come calling.

Either way, I want to talk about her game because it is just pleasant to watch. She has serious range and can take, and make, threes in various styles. She gets to the basket, either via quickness or strength, and can finish with either hand. She appears to have real passing chops too.

Bash Hudson, the lead scout for PrepGirls Hoops in New England, notes that Black “embraces the challenge of guarding the other team’s best player and puts the clamps on some of the best scorers in the region.” You can see some of that defensive acumen in the above highlight video and even more in the clips below.

God damn I love when a player has a full defensive highlights video!

She has active hands, jumps passing lanes, battles around screens to harass shooters, and can even black shots. As she just started her sophomore season, she may still be growing and could turn into an even more menacing defender.

I also love that she is an efficient scorer without being a high usage player. As she gets older she will certainly take more shots/be involved in more possessions and if she can keep her efficiency up, she’ll be one of the top players in the country.

Synergy Basketball @SynergySST

The most efficient scorers in Girls UAA 16U:

Her high school, Tabor Academy, won the NEPSAC Class AA championship last season and Black was named to the 16U UAA All-Circuit first-team for this summer. There is nowhere to find cumulative stats for stuff like that, but the few box scores I clicked on for Bay State showed that Black was usually their leading scorer and rebounder.

PrepGirls Hoops has her rated as the fourth best player in New England for the 2025 class and I imagine that we could see her as the top player in the region before she graduates.

I hope that Moseley and co. are putting the full court press (that’s a basketball term!) on Black and can get her on campus. She’s the type of player any team in America would want and she could be one that pushes the Badgers back into the NCAA Tournament.