UWM star Freeman to declare for draft, enter transfer portal
BJ Freeman, who authored one of the best twoyear runs by a player in UW-Milwaukee men’s basketball history, is moving on.
The junior wing man announced Tuesday on social media that he is declaring for the NBA draft and entering the transfer portal, essentially ending his tenure with the Panthers.
“BJ’s ultimate goal is to be a professional basketball player at the highest level, and part of his rights as a college basketball player is to hire an agent. They thought at this time he was in position to pursue professional basketball,” UWM coach Bart Lundy. “I think that’s his first and foremost goal.
“And if he doesn’t get the feedback that he wants from professional basketball, obviously he’s in a position where a lot of college teams that have a lot of NIL money will get involved. My conversation with BJ was, if you’re going to pursue professional basketball you should go into the portal and put everything above board and above the table.
“That doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t consider coming back here. But at some point, the NIL money becomes a factor and at Milwaukee we’re doing pretty well with NIL money relative to our league (UWM recently started the Panther Future Fund – run by Hall of Famer Joah Tucker– as the official collective for men’s basketball).
“But we are not going to be able to compete with some of the major money.”
A native of Selma, North Carolina, the 6-foot-6 Freeman was part of Lundy’s first recruiting class at UWM, having signed on to play for the Panthers after a season at Dodge City Community College in Dodge City, Kansas.
Soon thereafter, Freeman established himself as a force to be reckoned with as he averaged 18.2 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game en route to being named second team all-Horizon League.
His two biggest highlights came toward the end of that season – first, when he recorded just the fifth triple-double in program history with a 19-point, 12rebound, 11-assist effort in a win over Purdue FortWayne and then with a 43-point outburst in a victory over Stetson in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational.
That ranked as the second-highest scoring performance ever by a Panthers player behind only Von McDade’s 50-point game in 1990.
Freeman did consider entering the transfer portal after last season, but ultimately decided to stay at UWM despite receiving large NIL offers from several schools that he said were in the range of several hundred thousands of dollars.
Freeman missed eight games this past season – the bulk of that time caused by a back injury – but still managed to lead the Panthers with averages of 21.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.1 assists.
Among his personal highlights was a run of four consecutive double-doubles, a first in program history, and 10 consecutive 20-point games, tying him with Von McDade for the longest such streak ever at UWM.
While Freeman’s loss isn’t ideal for the Panthers, they should be in position to withstand the blow considering they are expected to return their next four highest-scoring players while also having added transfer AJ McKee.
Lundy was asked to describe the challenge of trying to build and maintain a program at the mid-major level in today’s day and age of big-money NIL deals and free-for-all transfers.
“You have a market marketplace for NIL money in college basketball, and the high-majors – especially the ones that are doing well with their collectives and with their NIL funding – are able to give players more money than they would make at many professional basketball jobs around the world outside of the NBA and probably the Euro League,” Lundy explained. “Here at Milwaukee we’re doing the best we can with NIL funding, but it is extremely difficult to compete with major teams who are funding like a professional basketball team.”