The nation is waking up to the reality that Nick Boyd and John Blackwell are the best backcourt in the entire country. There's no better tandem in all of the country, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a decent comparison. Washington's head coach, Danny Sprinkle, confirmed that he's now awake to this reality after losing to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Tournament.
During his press conference, he said, "They might be the best backcourt in the country. They really might be." And it would be hard for Sprinkle to say otherwise because 57 of the 85 Wisconsin points were scored by the duo.
Their two stat lines are pretty insane and show that they can take over games:
Nick Boyd - 23 points, 9 assists, 3 rebounds, and a steal
John Blackwell - 34 points, 10 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 assists
Those two essentially took over the game for Wisconsin and it was important that they needed to. Wisconsin was missing Nolan Winter and the frontcourt was mostly players without much experience especially in a tournament game like this. Boyd and Blackwell needed to take the heat and will Wisconsin to victory.
Zoom Diallo tried to compare the two backcourts but Wisconsin got the win
Sprinkle's comments come after Washington's Zoom Diallo's comments from before the game. There was a lot of confidence from Diallo about how he and Wesley Yates need to outperform Boyd and Blackwell. He said, "I think I can get downhill better than Boyd. And, I feel like Wes (Yates) can shoot it better than Blackwell, to be honest with you." Yet, that was put to the test, and it came up short.
Here's the stat lines from those two:
Zoom Diallo - 24 points, 7 assists, 4 rebounds, and a steal
Wesley Yates - 6 points, 7 rebounds, and 2 steals
Diallo did his part, but Yates didn't help the cause and went 1-6 from the field, 1-3 from three, and 3-4 from the line. Tough day at the office for him.
It was Blackwell and Boyd's day, and they pulled Wisconsin to the victory, and even Danny Sprinkle recognized it.