John Blackwell reveals why he chose Duke and what he didn’t have at Wisconsin

Wisconsin Badgers transfer guard John Blackwell made the major decision to transfer to the Duke Blue Devils this week, immediately putting them in contender status for the 2026-27 season.

After choosing to enter the transfer portal earlier this month, Blackwell immediately became one of the best players available, and some of the top schools in the nation started calling. The guard initially expected to make his announcement in May, but shut things down after a visit to Duke and committed to the Blue Devils this week.

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Following the announcement, he sat down with The Field Of 68’s Jeff Goodman and broke down why he chose the Blue Devils.

“First of all, I just want to thank Wisconsin, the whole fan base of Wisconsin, the coaching staff, and just everybody who was involved in my time at Wisconsin,” Blackwell said. “But why I chose Duke, it just felt right. It felt right for me from the jump when I talked to Coach [Jon] Scheyer and Coach [Emmanuel] Dildy hit me up, and we chatted and, you know, it just felt like the right situation for me. And then when I got on campus, it just confirmed everything that I was looking for.”

What was the overall process like for Blackwell, who had a ton of suitors to narrow down from?

“For me, my agents Todd [Ramasar] and Alexis [Liatsos] did a great job of narrowing the process down, narrowing my schools of who I was interested in,” Blackwell said. “And then we went about it the right way. We talked to schools, we set up meetings with schools. They came out here to LA to watch me work out and had lunch and dinner and those things.

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“And once we felt it was the best situations, we took the visits to the best situations. But it wasn’t too much. It was way quicker than a high school recruitment. It was just bam, bam, bam. You got to find a school to go to. But it’s just a blessing. Honestly, it’s a blessing for me to be in this position to be able to just pick the school that I want to go to and not feel…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/john-blackwell-reveals-why-chose-185947099.html

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Publish date : 2026-04-22 18:59:00

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