MADISON, Wis. — Evaluators of college football talent often point to a player’s junior season in high school as a true gauge of potential. That time frame typically is when prospects gain the most attention with scholarship offers from schools, if not sooner, in the quest to fill out future recruiting classes.

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Joe Huber was not one of those players. He didn’t even make the varsity football team that season. Instead, he was a 6-foot-2, 190-pound junior-varsity defensive lineman whose best sport at Jerome High School in Dublin, Ohio, was wrestling.

By the time he reached his senior season, he was a two-way varsity player — on the offensive line for the first time in his career in addition to the D-line — and grew to 6-4 and 220 pounds. Although Huber earned first-team all-conference and third-team all-state on offense, his measurables didn’t exactly scream major FBS prospect.

“We were probably three or four games into his senior season before he started getting any run at all,” Huber’s dad, Jim, said. “But since he didn’t really hit the scene until his senior year, he was behind the recruiting curve there.”

If you scour the internet for Huber’s high school recruiting ranking, you won’t find one. His 247Sports recruiting profile picture is a generic image of a nameless, faceless player with his arms crossed, wearing a white helmet with no logo. That pretty much sums up Huber’s high school recruitment. He earned a total of two walk-on opportunities at Cincinnati and Akron. He chose the Bearcats.

All Huber has done in the three years since he enrolled in college is exceed expectations and climb depth charts. Now, he’s hoping to achieve the same success at Wisconsin.

Huber is among the least talked about scholarship transfer portal additions for Wisconsin this offseason under coach Luke Fickell, who brought in a top-15 transfer class. He is one of two offensive linemen to transfer from Fickell’s Cincinnati team. The other, Jake Renfro, is projected to immediately start at center for the Badgers. Huber, meanwhile, is in a large group vying for a spot in the rotation at guard.

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Still, Huber’s arrival represents a vital addition to depth, talent and the quality locker room dynamic he’ll provide through dedication to his craft.

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“I still can’t believe he started his career at Cincinnati as a walk-on,” Renfro said. “From day one until today, he was always one of the best offensive linemen we had. And he was always the hardest worker we had.”

Huber — who was listed last season at 6-5 and 310 pounds — has followed the path of a classic Wisconsin walk-on, even if it didn’t actually occur at Wisconsin. In the winter of his senior year of high school, he wrestled at 220 pounds, went 38-8 and became the first wrestler from his school in four years to qualify for the Division I state tournament in Ohio. When the pandemic hit late in his senior year in March 2020, he focused on weight training, reaching 275 pounds by the time he moved in at Cincinnati.

Huber spent his true freshman season on the scout team and thrived in the weight room the next offseason to eclipse 300 pounds. He played 48 snaps as a reserve tackle during his redshirt freshman season in 2021, when Cincinnati qualified for the College Football Playoff, and then won the starting right tackle job in 2022.

Huber earned a scholarship and played 854 snaps last season, the second most on the team, and finished with a run-blocking grade of 83.7, per Pro Football Focus. That mark was top among Cincinnati’s offensive linemen and earned him honorable mention All-American Athletic Conference.

“He’s over 300 pounds, but he doesn’t carry a lot of excess weight,” Jim Huber said. “He’s not a big beef roast. He was an excellent wrestler, so he’s very athletic and he can bend. He’s got pretty good movement. My God, he’s strong as an ox.”

After Fickell accepted the Wisconsin job, Huber entered the transfer portal. His dad said 30-35 schools reached out expressing interest. Huber was pursued heavily by schools such as Auburn, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Maryland, Rutgers, Kentucky and Ole Miss. But Huber only visited Wisconsin, where brothers Jack and Barrett Nelson hosted him, and said he didn’t respond to inquiries from other programs.

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“Once Wisconsin reached out, I didn’t really see anything else that had much interest,” Huber said. “All my coaches were there that were from Cincinnati. I already had good relationships with them. I just knew them well. And then they brought me up there for a visit and I loved the campus, loved the facilities, loved the locker room and everything. I thought I would fit in with those guys.”

#OnWisconsin

— Joe Huber (@JoeHuber14) January 7, 2023

Jim said two other factors played a role in his son’s decision. He already was working toward an undergraduate degree at Cincinnati in mechanical engineering, and Wisconsin has a strong program in that area. The offensive line tradition at Wisconsin also was hard to ignore.

“Wisconsin’s O-line U,” Jim said. “Joe has aspirations to play at the next level and that definitely played a part in the decision. I’m sure most of the kids on the team can say they’re big, they’re athletic. But he’s really smart. I can tell you that there won’t be anybody on the team that outworks him. If he doesn’t get playing time, it won’t be because somebody outworked him.”

Wisconsin’s offensive line should have tremendous competition at its guard spots next season. Jack Nelson returns at left tackle after starting there last season, Renfro’s at center, and Riley Mahlman is a leading candidate at right tackle. Renfro’s addition should allow Tanor Bortolini, who has played center but has 13 career starts at guard, to potentially occupy one of the starting guard spots.

That could leave Huber, Michael Furtney, Trey Wedig and Joe Brunner, among others, to battle for starter reps. Furtney started nine games at right guard last season. Wedig made five starts at right tackle with two starts at right guard and one at left guard. Brunner, the highest-rated member of Wisconsin’s 2022 recruiting class, played sparingly but impressed in limited action during the team’s bowl game.

Huber certainly figures to have his work cut out for him. But if Renfro learned one thing from being around Huber the past three seasons, it’s this: Don’t ever count him out.

“Joe Huber is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met,” Renfro said. “He is the hardest worker I’ve ever met in my life. That man does not stop in whatever he does. There was actually a funny story. Have you ever heard of an offensive lineman running a half marathon and then going to summer conditioning the next day? He did that, and he is an animal. He is going to enhance that Wisconsin culture through and through.”

(Photo: Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)