Four-star Rivals150 standout Isaac Traudt got home from his weekend at Virginia with some work to do.
The first day of practice for his senior basketball season at Grand Island (NE) Senior High School is still about two months away. The schedule won’t tip off until early December. So Traudt has some time to get started on the training plan he picked up from Virginia strength and conditioning coach Mike Curtis while visiting his future college home.
Traudt began the workouts this week. There’s a 40-minute warmup before some weight training and then cardio to finish, with an emphasis on mobility and stretching. He’ll do it three times a week.
“It was a lot more difficult than the high school workouts that I’m used to,” the skilled forward told CavsCorner with a chuckle.
Traudt had been committed to UVa for less than a week when he landed in Charlottesville with his parents and sister last Friday. Isaac McKneely and Leon Bond, the other four-star players in the Cavaliers’ 2022 recruiting class, were also in town with their families.
The highly-regarded trio got a chance to spend extended time with current UVa players and got feedback from the coaching staff on what they need to work on as they prepare for the highest level of college basketball. Curtis hooked them up with those workout plans to get started on at home.
And they got to grow closer as a class, which came together when Bond committed in July and Traudt followed late last month. McKneely was the first on board with UVa, committing back in January.
“It definitely solidified that we’re gonna love playing with each other and being around each other,” Traudt said. “We all just kind of clicked. We’re all pretty close now. We’re all just kind of similar-minded people, hard-working kids but definitely laid back and want to have fun sometimes too. So we’ll definitely hit it off as soon as we get up to campus.”
Traudt already had a strong sense for the fervor of the UVa basketball fanbase from social media, where an ‘Isaac Squared’ campaign had been running strong on Twitter since before he joined McKneely in the Wahoos’ recruiting class. As the recruits walked around Grounds during their visit, Traudt got an even better idea of the excitement fans have for his incoming class.
They were often asked to pose for pictures. There was plenty of discussion about comparisons to the 2016 class that included guards Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome, and De’Andre Hunter and forward Jay Huff, four key players on UVa’s 2019 national championship team.
“It’s definitely really cool,” Traudt admitted. “That’ll be our goal too but just getting the love from the fanbase in that regard is definitely special.”
Then they got to last Saturday night’s football game against William & Mary. Traudt has yet to experience the electricity of a packed John Paul Jones Arena—prior to this past weekend, he’d only been to Charlottesville for his official visit in June—but was sitting amid the ‘Orange Out’ alongside Bond and McKneely plus UVa head coach Tony Bennett.
“It was really cool because I was sitting next to Coach Bennett, and I just asked him if the student section was that rowdy at basketball games too,” he recounted. “And he said that but like times 10. So that’ll be really fun to play in front of.”
Seeing most of the crowd clad in orange at the football game also prompted Traudt to ask Bennett something else.
“I asked if they would ever get some orange jerseys and he said, ‘Probably not,’” Traudt shared with a laugh. “He’s got kind of an old school approach with the white at home and navy on the road, and it’s definitely worked for him.”
Traudt also talked basketball with his future head coach and the rest of the staff last weekend. They told the 6-foot-9 Traudt, who can both stretch the floor and play above the rim offensively, to focus on improving his lateral movement on the defensive end while becoming an even stronger shooter.
“They kind of see me as a three or four,” he said. “So just being able to stretch the floor at a high level will help me be able to beat close-outs off the dribble and everything.”
A few days before Traudt announced his college decision, the forward rose seven spots to No. 60 in the most recent update to the Rivals150 rankings. McKneely (No. 67) and Bond (No. 85) also climbed in the rankings, with McKneely bumping up three spots and Bond cracking the top 150 for the first time while adding a fourth star.
North Carolina, Creighton, Michigan State and Nebraska were among the other schools he was considering in recruiting. He reiterated this week that UVa’s track record in player development was a key reason why he picked the Wahoos. He also admitted that getting that decision out of the way took a big burden off his mind.
“I haven’t had any hesitations, any second thoughts. That’s been really good,” Traudt said. “And just having all that pressure and stress off of me. The last month of the recruiting process was definitely weighing on me so just to be able to take all that weight off my shoulders and just focus on my school and senior season and all that, it feels amazing.”
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