Wisconsin Badgers star John Blackwell has seen an interesting start to the season. On one hand, the guard has already racked up a Big Ten Player of the Week award after a stretch where he scored 86 points in three games.
On the other hand, Blackwell has been inefficient from the field so far, shooting just 38.5 percent from the field, while seeing some ups and downs defensively. He’s seen some really good games, but also nights like his 1/11 performance against the Nebraska Cornhuskers last week.
Wisconsin’s offense as a whole dealt with struggles in the 30-point loss to Nebraska. They stopped moving the ball well and didn’t generate many quality looks in the second half, where it felt like the effort level was lower than usual.
But, that all starts with Blackwell and fellow guard Nick Boyd, who have been the main initiators of the offense so far this season.
After the Nebraska loss, how did head coach Greg Gard approach the game with his two top scorers? It all started with a meeting the day after the loss.
“They were the first two guys in my office Thursday,” Gard said about Boyd and Blackwell. “So they met with me before we met with the whole team. So just to understand, looking at the analytics behind it, looking at breaking down the science behind, you know, shooting percentages and them individually, and then how can their individual play improve to help the team.
“Because they’re obviously two leaders. They’ve come from different ways. John’s been here and grown through the system. Nick’s obviously new, but the younger guys and the less experienced guys follow their example. So if we’re taking shots that are out of character, if we’re not guarding like we should be, they’re setting examples, so just understanding, I think looking at the analytics, really showing them the numbers, that we can’t be taking bad twos, we can’t be taking a lot of off the dribble threes, we can’t be taking quick threes because here’s all the negative things that along with missing the shot, there’s a lot of negative that comes with it.
“So getting them to understand that and really see now that we’ve got a little more sample size, a little more data in the system, you can really start to see trends. And for both of them, Nick’s finish rate at the rim has been really good. I think he’s shooting close to 65 percent at the rim. John’s not. John’s got to improve his finish rate around the rim and minimize those mid-range twos, or eliminate the mid-range twos and take better threes. So when those guys kind of follow that plan, everybody else falls in line and has the same discipline offensively as well.”
Blackwell had seen some rough performances this season, but none compared to his nightmare 1/11 game against Nebraska where it also felt like he was getting picked on defensively at times. Did that require an additional message from Gard to get back on track.
“I mean, he knew, you know, before anybody knows. The players know. Right. A player knows if he didn’t play well on both ends,” Gard said about Blackwell. “And I must say, as I told him, it’s not because you’re a 1 for 11, it’s because you weren’t engaged in impacting the game in ways that you have primarily your whole career. So you come off an exceptional week where you’re Big Ten Player of the Week, you’ve got to continue to have that same DNA in your game that you had as a freshman.
“And then what got you on the floor as a freshman, and yeah, you add the scoring and how your game has grown to it. Don’t forget those things that made you who you were as a freshman, and keep those things because when he’s really good, he’s making all those other plays too. It’s not just scoring 30 a game. It’s all the other ways he impacts our team.”
Do those meetings between Gard and his two guards happen often?
“No, that was me saying hey, you need to be in my office, we need to chat stuff,” Gard said. “So yeah, they come up, periodically they pop in. But that, those two I wanted because we had to understand and talk about some things about how we need to be better. That was, like I said, that’s Nebraska’s good. I’m not sure they’re 30 points better than us, so I was more disappointed in us than anything else. And you always point look to your leaders like, ‘hey, you gotta tell me what did we do differently wrong? What do we gotta change?’
“And, when I went to meet with them, I had data. It wasn’t just my opinion or [my] observations. The film doesn’t lie. And then we have the data. It wasn’t just that night. You look at a season-wide box of data, so to speak, and look at trends and how, when you’re good, what the trends are, and when you struggle, what the trends are.”
Gard, Boyd, Blackwell, and the rest of the Badgers will have their chance to bounce back when they face the Villanova Wildcats on Friday, with tip-off set for 7:00 P.M. at the Fiserv Forum on FOX. It’ll be a chance for a Quad 1 win, as Villanova is a top-40 team, according to NET.
