Lucas: Bell, Badger receivers ready for primetime

BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer

MADISON, Wis. – Long after the practice, Skyler Bell and Keontez Lewis were having a catch. Separated by five yards, they were tossing a football back and forth on their home field of dreams, Barry Alvarez Field at Camp Randall Stadium. It has become a ritual for the roommates.

"Number one, they're talking about the day," observed Wisconsin wide receiver coach Alvis Whitted. "How was the practice? What could we have done better? Whatever it may be.

"They've got a really good connection. And they work. Those two kids work. They want to get better. Anytime they're together, it's not just idle talk. It's about, 'Hey, what did you see?' During warmups, they have a routine where they catch and do their drills together. So, I just let them be."

During Tuesday's post-practice catch, Whitted stood alongside of the duo for a brief time and exchanged friendly banter. Some teammates also engaged Bell and Lewis before heading to the locker room. Among them was fellow wide receivers Markus Bell and Chimere Dike.

"We were just talking about plays that happened in practice – where we can be better, where we made mistakes," Bell explained of his routine with Lewis. "Everything just happened. It's fresh in your mind, it's recent. We're going to meet later and watch the film and talk about it there, too."

Tuesday's on-field conversation swung to basketball. "We were talking about the best high school players that we've seen in person," Bell remarked. "Everybody was saying players from their own cities. Chim said someone from Wisconsin, he said Tyler Herro. K-Lew said Jason Tatum from St. Louis."

Bell is from the Bronx, a borough of 1.4 million people (and a whole lot of ballers) in New York City. Limited to singling out just one hooper, the best of the best, he admitted with understandable consternation, "That's tough. I've got a lot of big names that have come out of my city."

Rather than identifying the best player, he came up with the best performance that he had seen. When he was an eighth grader, he watched Isaiah Washington score more than 50 points in the Gaucho Gym, a short walk from Yankee Stadium. The New York Gauchos are a legendary AAU program.

Bell played for the Gauchos (whose impressive NBA alumni list includes Chris Mullin, Pearl Washington, Stephon Marbury, Kenny Anderson, Ed Pinkney, Kemba Walker, to mention just a few). As a youngster, Bell spent many weekends playing at fabled Rucker Park in Harlem, a hoop heaven.

"A lot of my friends are playing college basketball right now," said Bell, rattling off the names of Malachi Smith (Dayton), Kyle Cuffe (Kansas), RJ Davis (North Carolina) and Avery Brown (Columbia). "Those are guys that I grew up with since the second or third grade."

Bell grew up training in his father's gym. Derrick Bell is a well-known personal trainer and fitness consultant, and the CEO and founder of Guerrilla Prince Fitness/Athletics. In short, the mission statement is focused on the student-athlete with a commitment to "dominating sports and studies."

Besides football and basketball, Skyler Bell competed in multiple sports, including lacrosse and hockey. The latter was one of his favorites. Bell skated for the New York City Cyclones and Riverbank State Park youth teams. He's a big fan of the Washington Capitals, especially Alexander Ovechkin.

"Hockey was probably my main sport," Bell said, "before football took over."

Bell advanced his football career at the Taft School, a private boarding school in Watertown, Connecticut. His older brother, O'Shea, attended Taft for a year. A Stonehill College graduate, he's now the assistant Dean of Students for Equity and Community life at Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mass.

(Packers running back AJ Dillon played four years at Lawrence before going to Boston College.)

"He (O'Shea) gave me the ins and outs of the school (Taft) before I got there, so it was an easy transition," said Bell, who started off in the secondary (like his brother) before establishing himself as an explosive kick returner and No. 1 receiver. As a junior, he had 36 catches for 549 yards and eight TDs.

Whitted made Bell his top priority in the 2021 recruiting cycle. He has often compared him to Michael Gallup of the Dallas Cowboys – a wide receiver that he coached at Colorado State. In mid-August of 2020, Bell committed to the Badgers, the first wideout in the class.

Allen followed in November after decommitting from Michigan. In July of that year, Lewis committed to UCLA. He had been recruited by more than a half-dozen Big Ten programs. But not Wisconsin. Small world. They're now all fixtures in the Badger rotation, a rapidly developing unit.

"Me, Keontez and Markus are in the same class and we kind of jelled right away – we're always with each other, hanging out, doing something," said Bell, who has grown close with Lewis, a January transfer to the UW. "If you see him, you're probably going to see me. That's my dog.

"We're both from inner cities and from the minute he transferred here, we clicked right away."

On the field, Bell said, "We compete every day. We come to practice seeing who's going to catch the most deep balls and touchdowns." At their apartment, he said, "If we're not talking football, we're probably either asleep or playing video games. Football is our life right now. That's all we think about."

Last Saturday, Lewis scored his first career touchdown on an 18-yard pass from Graham Mertz in the second quarter against New Mexico State. Suitably challenged by his roomie, Bell caught his first and second career TD passes from Mertz in the third quarter. They covered 49 and 19 yards.

"I was hyped for my boy – I know what he went through at UCLA playing that whole year not getting the ball," Bell said of Lewis, who had zero catches and only two targets as a Bruins freshman. "It was exciting for me to see my brother score his first touchdown. We feed off each other."

A year ago, Bell was hounded by hamstring injuries and appeared in just one game, the Las Vegas Bowl. But it was memorable for Bell because he hauled in his first collegiate pass, a 15-yard completion on third-and-9 that led to a field goal and a 20-6 halftime lead over Arizona State.

"It was huge for me, especially as a confidence booster – just seeing myself make plays, being able to get my feet wet, getting that first taste of what college football is really like," said the 6-foot, 190-pound Bell. "I just built off that into the spring and the fall and now into the season."

After three games, Dike is the receiving leader with nine catches, one more than Bell and tight end Clay Cundiff. Allen and tight end Hayden Rucci have four receptions each. Lewis has caught three passes and made the most of them. He has the highest average yards per catch (26.7) on the team.

Bell went 4-for-4 against New Mexico State. Four targets, four catches for 108 yards. Coupled with Dike's 106-receiving yards in the Illinois State opener, it's the first time the Badgers have had more than one player with 100-yard games since 2017 (Troy Fumagalli, A.J. Taylor and Quintez Cephus).

"I'm excited for all my kids," Whitted said of his receiving corps, which got a boost Saturday when Dean Engram, a converted defensive back, got into the stat column with three catches for 65 yards. "They're young, but they're hungry and they want to work. They want to get better.

"This journey that they're all on right now is pretty awesome."

Bell has been grateful for Whitted's guidance. "Even if we run good routes," Bell said, "he's going to tell us, 'You could have been better out of your break … you could have been better with your demeanor and pad level.' It might be nit-picky, and we might not want to hear it all the time …"

But he conceded that Whitted's attention to detail has made all the receivers better. Mertz obviously has had a hand in that development. He ranks fifth in the nation in passing efficiency (190.9). Ohio State's C.J. Stroud is No. 2 (208.6), 22 points higher than his school record (186.6) set last season.

On Saturday night, the Badgers will face the Buckeyes in Columbus for the first time since 2019. Allen will have extra incentive. He's from Dayton. Bell will have his own motivation. "The first three games are behind us," he said, "and conference play is where the season really starts."

While eyeing Bell and Lewis going through their post-practice catch earlier this week, Whitted said, "I've seen them grow from the spring to (training) camp to now – they're growing and they're getting better – and they still have a long way to go now that we're in the meat of the conference.

"But I know they'll step up to the plate because they have."

An apt baseball idiom. Especially for Bell, a huge fan of the Bronx Bombers and Aaron Judge.

Just don't bring up the Knicks.

University of Wisconsin Athletics

Lucas: Bell, Badger receivers ready for primetime

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Skyler Bell

Clay Cundiff

Chimere Dike

Dean Engram

Keontez Lewis

Graham Mertz

Hayden Rucci

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