Badger Basketball Exit Meetings: Wisconsin bids farewell to John Blackwell

John Blackwell has no hard feelings towards Wisconsin. That doesn’t ease the blow of losing a guy who Greg Gard and his staff developed from a freshman who had no other high-major offers to a guy with All-American upside in his senior year, but that’s just how it goes in this day and age.

Before officially shutting the door on his tenure at Wisconsin, I assessed his junior season. Despite the sour taste left by him transferring, it was another season of growth and exceptional offensive performances leading to big wins.

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2025-26 stats (33.8 minutes per game)

19.1 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.1 SPG | 43% FG, 38.9% 3-pt, 85.9% FT

2025-26 High

When I reflect on the peak of Blackwell’s season, my head goes to two stretches of games. The first was the two-game stretch which featured the win in Ann Arbor over Michigan, followed by the nail-biter at The Barn to beat Minnesota just days later. The second stretch, consisting of three games, started in the regular-season finale and ran through the spectacular win over Illinois in the Big Ten Tournament.

In these five games, Blackwell scored 26, 27, 25, 34 and 31 points, respectively, on a combined 47-for-84 shooting, connecting on 24 of his 49 attempts from deep. The standout play from these games was obviously his pull-up three at the buzzer to down the Gophers in their own gym, but there was so much more to these stretches than a highlight game winner.

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Blackwell arrived on campus as a freshman and immediately carved out a role playing hard, rebounding, cutting and making the open jumper at a decent clip. These five games showcased how far he’d come, as he played at an All-American level, not bad for a guy with only one high-major offer.

At all three levels, Blackwell got buckets. The pull-up three to beat Minnesota wasn’t something that was in his game as a freshman, and he did it with consistency as a junior. He played off-the-ball and improved drastically as a catch-and-shoot player when Nick Boyd was taking the…

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Publish date : 2026-05-26 16:58:00

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