John Tonje is an old soul. He likes to drink coffee, read books and listen to podcasts. One of his favorite hobbies is to go for long, solitary walks around Madison. He aims for 20,000 steps a day — 10,000 just wasn’t enough — but the secret spots he prefers to stroll are becoming not-so-secret anymore. For the first time, Tonje is starting to get recognized.
When he mentioned this to his mother, Sara, she told him that it wasn’t particularly surprising, given that his picture is now everywhere. The experience was so new for Tonje, it’s almost as if it never occurred to him that he might become famous. “He wasn’t like, everyone should clear the streets for me,” Sara tells Hoops HQ. “He was just marveling at, you know, people see who I am now.”
It is indeed a marvelous change for a player who was barely recruited out of high school, came off the bench for most of his first three college seasons and missed nearly all of last year due to injury. Tonje, a 6-foot-5 graduate student who transferred from Missouri, has led No. 15 Wisconsin to a perfect 7-0 start, averaging 23 points (ninth in Division I) and 5.4 rebounds, while shooting 54 percent from the field and 41 percent from three. He dropped 41 points — two shy of the school record — in a 103-88 upset victory over No. 9 Arizona on November 15, going 8 of 14 from the field and an incredible 21-of-22 from the free throw line.
“I’m not really an emotional guy, but I was kind of getting a little emotional because this guy has worked so hard for this,” Malcolm Tonje, John’s brother, recalls of that special night at the Kohl Center. “And for him to perform this way on such a big platform, this is what he’s been talking about since he was a kid.”
The performance was unforgettable, but it wasn’t just a one-off. Tonje lifted Wisconsin to the Greenbrier Tip-Off championship this past weekend, scoring 33 points and grabbing 7 rebounds in the title game. “I think the biggest thing is, he’s just [developed] so much confidence in what we’re doing and how he’s playing,” Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard tells Hoops HQ. “And he’s found it to be a really, really good fit.”
John’s rise — from unknown prospect to bona fide superstar — also provides Gard a perfect example of what he is constantly messaging to his players: remain patient, maintain belief, continue to work hard and your time will come.
“I just play the game because I love to get better,” Tonje tells Hoops HQ. “Since I was a kid, I would go to the gym or go to the park by myself and just shoot, and then go play someone one-on-one to try out my new moves and see my new skills, and just find the competition to keep getting better. I think my college experience has represented that.”
Call it confidence or stubbornness or delusion — John Tonje somehow still believed.
It was well into his senior year of high school and Tonje had no Division I scholarship offers, but he was convinced that one was coming. “I would just keep praying,” he says. “I remember in January and February of my senior year, I was just like, ‘Man, I know by next month I should have an offer. I will have an offer in a month.’”
The summer prior, he had switched AAU teams to get more exposure to college coaches. After every tournament, his teammates picked up more offers, yet Tonje heard nothing. “I was like, if they can get it, why can’t I? I just used it as motivation,” he says. “I kept working.”
Counselors at Omaha Central High encouraged him to apply for academic scholarships, but Tonje declined. His mind was dead set on playing college basketball and nothing was going to change that. “I thought that in his heart, he really believed all that time, I can do this,” Sara says.
At one point, Tonje received an offer from a Division II school. He told Sara that he wasn’t interested. The offer he was waiting for was imminent — he was sure of it. “I was looking at him kind of crazy,” says Malcolm. “I’m like, ‘Bro, they’re offering you to go to school. People don’t get opportunities like this.’ He’s like, ‘No, bro.’ I thought he was a little delusional, because nobody just gets something like that and just brushes it to the side.”
Admittedly, the Tonje family knew very little about the basketball world. John’s father, Jean, is a native of Cameroon and played soccer for the Cameroonian national team. Sara is a pastor. His brothers, Malcolm and Texan, don’t play basketball. John picked up the sport during recess in elementary school. “All the cool kids were playing basketball,” he explains. “That’s where it started. I wanted to keep moving up the ranks of when you get picked, so I started walking to the park by myself and I would shoot for hours.”
Basketball quickly became his obsession. According to Sara, handprints can be found all over the Tonje household, where John would repeatedly pretend to dunk. Early on, he didn’t have someone to teach him the game. He would watch highlights on YouTube — mainly of his favorite player, Derrick Rose — and then go to the park and try to mimic the moves. “He blazed his own path the whole way,” says Malcolm. “I have people who come up to me to this day and they’re like, ‘Man, I used to play basketball with John. He used to suck so bad.’ But he trains harder than anybody I know.”
Inside the ACC: SMU Is an Early Surprise
PLUS: UNC gets off the mat and Cooper Flagg grows upAs he grew older, Tonje was always at the park or the nearby YMCA, working on his game. He eventually graduated from recess to real teams in organized leagues. Basketball is huge in North Omaha, and Tonje has fond memories of playing at the local Boys & Girls Club in front of what felt like the entire town.
Tonje made significant strides, sure, but he wasn’t some up-and-coming star. “He loved it, so of course you support your kid. But I just thought, I don’t know that he’s good. I don’t have eyes to see basketball,” Sara says. “I don’t know if that’s good or not good.”
There were little moments when John’s talent and potential began to appear. A growth spurt while he was in high school certainly helped. Sara remembers being at a game when the person next to her suddenly turned and said, “You are never paying for college for this boy.” She laughed it off, figuring it was a joke.
Tonje was on the freshman B team at Omaha North High School. After transferring to Omaha Central for his sophomore year, he made the varsity squad but averaged just 1.6 points. As a junior he started to make a real impact, averaging 13.6 points and connecting on 46 percent of his three-point attempts. All the while, he practically lived in the gym. “One time a day, he grabs his basketball shoes, grabs that backpack, and hits the door,” Malcolm recalls. “At any time before like 9 p.m., you know exactly where he’s at.”
By his senior season, John was one of the most dominant players in all of Nebraska. He averaged a Class A state-best 23.8 points and broke the school’s single-season scoring record. He could always shoot from the perimeter, but now he was also dunking on defenders on a regular basis. Still, he received virtually no interest from Division I programs.
Ben Holling, who coached Tonje as a sophomore before leaving Omaha Central, had a relationship with Colorado State assistant coach Ali Farokhmanesh. He sent Farokhmanesh tape of Tonje and urged him to give the kid a chance. Farokhmanesh, a former standout guard himself at Northern Iowa, was impressed with what he saw and eventually made it to one of Central’s games. Tonje erupted for 30 points, helping to seal the deal. Colorado State made him an offer not long after and Tonje jumped at it.
“I was so happy to finally get that,” he says. “I had prayed just to be the last guy on the bench. Like, all I wanted to do was make the team. That’s all I wanted — just to get there.”
The Colorado State staff, led by head coach Niko Medved, initially planned to redshirt Tonje. He was a zero-star recruit in a freshman class with high-profile prospects such as forward David Roddy, who now plays for the Atlanta Hawks. But Tonje made enough of an impression over the summer that Medved opted to keep him on the active roster.
Tonje’s college career has played out much like high school. He filled a minimal role in his first season with the Rams, logging just 8.5 minutes per contest. He has raised his game to another level every year and coaches have awarded him with more playing time. By his junior campaign at Colorado State, when the team went 25-6 and reached the NCAA tournament, Tonje was the third-leading scorer (9.1 points per game). He started all 33 games the following season and averaged career-highs across the board: 14.6 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 47 percent shooting from the field.
When he entered his name in the 2023 transfer portal, Tonje experienced a much different recruiting process. He was highly sought after by schools across the country, eventually committing to Missouri. Expectations were high for the fifth-year senior, but an offseason foot injury badly hampered him. He played sparingly through the first few months of the season before being shut down in January, allowing him to apply for a medical redshirt and gain another year of eligibility. Overall, he appeared in just eight games (9.6 minutes per) and averaged 2.6 points.
Of course, it was a devastating blow for Tonje, especially given his steady climb to that point. “I’m expecting to have a huge fifth-year season, high hopes and high expectations, and I get injured,” he says. “And I’m thinking, like, why? Why is this happening? But soon after, I realized that it was a great thing for me to just sit down and reflect.”
Tonje had hardly slowed down throughout his career. Now he was being forced to. He took an old soul approach to the adversity and used it as an opportunity to grow. He watched more film than ever before. He went through his old games, Missouri’s games and other college and NBA games. He studied guys who were playing well to decipher what, specifically, was working. “It felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day for me to watch all the film that I wanted to,” he says.
Tonje also took the time away to “work on himself and figure out who I am and who I want to be, and just kind of lay out what I want to get to,” he tells Hoops HQ. He changed some of his routines and mentally prepared for the ensuing season. Books such as Don’t Believe Everything You Think, Atomic Habits, The Secret and The Power of Positive Thinking have informed his mindset.
Since Tonje arrived in Madison, Gard has been struck by the 23-year-old’s poise and maturity, both on and off the court. Tonje always stays composed during games, even in the intense moments. He scores at a high rate and does so efficiently, which was one of the goals he set for himself while sidelined. Tonje ranks first in Division I in free throws per game (8.6) and is hitting 41 percent of his threes. Wisconsin lost its top scorer from last season, guard AJ Storr, but Tonje has seamlessly stepped into the team’s leading role.
According to Gard, Tonje has also been a leader and voice of reason in the locker room. “We live in such a world of instant gratification from a player’s perspective,” Gard says. “They want it now and it doesn’t work like that. Anything substantial worth having is going to take time and he’s put time in at other places. Being patient and continuing to work, I think that it’s a great lesson and modeling for a lot of young players, just that it’s not going to happen overnight.”
It would have been hard for anyone to envision what is happening now, but those close to Tonje can’t say they are completely stunned. He has taken a step forward every year of his basketball journey. This is simply the next step.
“Once he went to college, it was like, if you were denying it until now, you have to stop,” Malcolm says, “because everything this kid wants, he’s getting. I don’t think anybody had a shadow of a doubt at that point, because he was chasing his dream. He’s the type of guy where nothing’s going to stop him.”
“He got himself there,” Sara adds. “He totally got himself there.”
