Wisconsin Badgers enter NCAA Tournament believing their best basketball is still ahead
Wisconsin basketball players believe the Badgers are still improving as they prepare to face 12-seed High Point in the NCAA Tournament.
There’s a difference between a team being happy to hear its name called on Selection Sunday and one believing the version of itself the country is about to meet still hasn’t fully shown up on the court yet.
Wisconsin men’s basketball sounds a lot more like the second one.
That’s what stood out most from the Badgers’ player reactions after learning they’d open the NCAA Tournament as a No. 5 seed against 12th-seeded High Point in Portland. This was not a group that talked like it had already accomplished something by getting in. It sounded like a team that thinks the growth of the last two months was real, but still not complete.
That matters this time of year.
Teams that limp into March usually sound tired. Teams that know they’ve improved tend to sound sharper, more certain of themselves, and more comfortable in their own skin. In the case of John Blackwell and Braeden Carrington, they believe Wisconsin’s best basketball still lies ahead.
That confidence is not coming from nowhere.
The Badgers have spent the better part of two months changing the narrative around their season. Back in January, there were fair questions about whether this team would even make it into the field of 68. Now, after a late-season surge and a run to the Big Ten Tournament semifinals, Wisconsin enters the NCAA Tournament looking a lot more like a team that’s built to stay a while than one just hoping not to get bounced early.
Carrington, who is averaging a career-high 8.4 points and 2.5 rebounds off the bench while shooting a career-best 40.2% from beyond the arc despite playing just 18 minutes per game, made that point without trying to dress it up. The clearly defined role Carrington has carved out this season has allowed him to maximize his impact. It also has the Minnesota native preparing for the first NCAA Tournament appearance of his career — a moment he believes this team has been building toward all season.
“I don’t know if we proved anything to ourselves,” Carrington said of Wisconsin’s Big Ten Tournament run. “I think we knew what we had in this locker room the whole season. Obviously, it took a while to get where we want to be. But I think to the whole country, we proved we can make a run in this tournament.”
That phrasing wasn’t accidental. There’s an important distinction there. Wisconsin doesn’t believe it suddenly discovered something about itself last week. It believes the rest of the country is only now catching up to what has been building inside that locker room for a while.
That internal belief is part of what makes this team interesting.
There’s an edge to this team, but it doesn’t feel manufactured. Teams can fake confidence, but it’s a little harder to fake edge when Nick Boyd is running the point. Carrington took it a step further when he looked ahead to what Wisconsin could become if it gets healthier in the coming days.
“We have some of the best guards in the country, probably the best backcourt in the country,” Carrington explained. “That can take us a long way. And then once we get our team fully healthy, I think we’re a team that nobody wants to play.”
That line right there is probably the headline thought for Wisconsin entering the big dance.
Wisconsin isn’t satisfied just to be dancing. And it doesn’t view itself as dangerous because of favorable seeding, matchups, or the usual March Madness conjecture. The Badgers players believe they’re dangerous because the version of themselves that has started to show up over the last several weeks still has another gear if Nolan Winter returns to the starting lineup and Jack Janicki can give them something off the bench.
Blackwell echoed that same general idea, just from a slightly different angle. The junior guard, who is averaging 19.0 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 2.3 assists while shooting 38.4% from three this season, believes Wisconsin’s Big Ten Tournament run was a step in the right direction.
“Great step in the right direction, I think mentally and defensively,” Blackwell said when discussing Wisconsin’s performance in Chicago. “I’ve been better since stepping it up a little bit more. Then I think as a team, we’re just more connected right now and just flowing at the right pace right now. Then when we get Nolan back, and hopefully Janicki back, we’ll be better.”
That quote says a lot.
More connected. Flowing at the right pace. The sum of the parts being better when they’re whole. That’s not the language of a team that thinks it’s firing on all cylinders. It’s the language of a team that believes the foundation is finally sturdy enough for the best version of itself to show up under the brightest lights. And for Wisconsin, that’s a good place to be heading into a tournament where guard play, connectivity, and experience often play a pretty significant role in whether or not teams advance.
This does not mean High Point should be taken lightly. The Panthers enter the tournament at 30-4 and are riding the nation’s longest active winning streak at 14 games, something Blackwell was quick to point out.
“I think they’re a great team, obviously, because they made the tournament,” Blackwell said. “So just being extra super locked in and focused, paying attention to scout as we scout this week and just coming out firing.”
That’s the balancing act every team has to strike in March. Respect the opponent. Don’t fear the moment. Wisconsin’s players sound like they understand both assignments, and that’s a credit to the way Greg Gard and his staff have built and prepared this roster for this exact stage.
And maybe that’s the real takeaway here.
The Badgers are not walking into the NCAA Tournament talking like a team that got hot at the right time and hopes the ride continues. They’re talking like a team that believes the hard part was becoming this version of itself in the first place. Now that Wisconsin has become that — or believes it will be once fully healthy — the opportunity in front of it feels a lot bigger than simply surviving the first round.
Wisconsin has already spent months proving it belongs. Now the focus shifts to how far this group can go, with the program chasing its first Sweet 16 appearance since 2017. This is the Badgers’ third straight NCAA Tournament trip and the eighth under Gard, whose teams have reached the big dance as consistently as almost anyone in the country during his tenure. Now the stage is set for the silent assassin to see just how far he can take them.
We appreciate you taking the time to read our work at BadgerNotes.com. Your support means the world to us and has helped us become a leading independent source for Wisconsin Badgers coverage.
You can also follow Site Publisher Dillon Graff at @DillonGraff on X.