La Crosse’s Jordan Davis leaving Badgers, enters transfer portal

La Crosse native Jordan Davis is leaving the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.

The junior guard entered the transfer portal on Thursday, after seeing his season go from a high-minutes starter to a bench role.

Davis started the first 18 games for the Badgers, until freshman Connor Essegian eventually took his spot full time in the lineup in January.

Essegian and Davis also let to be known on Twitter that there were know hard feelings.

Davis, a 6-foot-4 junior guard, finished the season averaging 5.1 points, 3.5 rebounds. He shot 39.9% from the field and 30.8 from beyond the arc.

Davis started the season strong, scoring 13 and 11 points in back-to-back games against Stanford and UW-Green Bay in Wisconsin’s second and third games.

But playing time dwindled in January — getting over 20 minutes just twice in the final 10 games — as he continued to struggle with shooting. He had a career-high 15 points at Northwestern, and scored 14 points twice this season but those were the only five games he scored in double figures.

Davis is a Central High School graduate, who won state as a freshman (2017). He committed to Wisconsin, along with his twin brother, Johnny Davis in the summer of 2019.

Johnny Davis broke out and garnered NCAA player of the year hype as a sophomore for UW. He was the Big Ten Player of the Year, and went on to become the 10th pick in the 2022 NBA draft by the Washington Wizards. His playing time has shot up of late.

Along with Jordan Davis, Aquinas graduate Lexi Donarski also entered the transfer portal last weekend. She too is a junior, but had started every game for Iowa State and was the conference’s defensive player of the year as a sophomore. Read more about her here.