The Wisconsin Badgers knocked off the Illinois Fighting Illini, and the next day, Tom Izzo was asked about it in his weekly presser as the Michigan State Spartans come to the Kohl Center on Friday. He had a lot of praise for the team, the Big Ten, for specific players, but one player he could not stop talking about: John Blackwell. He not only had Blackwell's love in his opening statement, but he also returned to the theme multiple times.
In the opening statement, Izzo said, "Blackwell is unfortunately, if I wasn't playing against him, I think he's one of my favorite players because he guards it, he's tough, he's strong, he can get to the rim, he can shoot threes, he can pass it. He is definitely one of the better players in our league."
Tom Izzo thinks that John Blackwell is the full meal deal in college hoops
Related: Brad Underwood was chock-full of excuses after Wisconsin's upset of Illinois
As he journeyed through the questions in the press conference, one question came up about Wisconsin's roster. He mentioned Boyd but quickly returned to his favorite player on Wisconsin, "Blackwell is, to me, a special player in this league and a and and I think a guy that's going to play basketball a lot when he's done because of size, strength, smarts, and he just kind of controls the game in his own way. He's never out of control. And I think he put a lot of people last night in a position to score."
Blackwell has been special for Wisconsin since he came, but last year and this year, he's really become a star. He even tested the NBA waters after last season, but he decided to come back and increase his draft stock. He could take these comments from Tom Izzo and put them on his NBA draft resume. Izzo doesn't gush about a lot of opposing players; shoot, he struggles to gush about his own players at times.
Tom Izzo wishes he would have worked harder to get John Blackwell to play for Michigan State
At another random point, he went back to Blackwell after a question about why Izzo didn't recruit him, and Izzo went on a long explanation about how great Blackwell is again, "I'd like to fire all my assistants that went through that with me. The problem is the head coach went down and saw him, too... I don't have many regrets, but that would have been one just because, um, he has the whole package if you ask me. He's a player. He's a good person. Uh, Ilistened to him speak last night. He does a hell of a job, and his dad's a good guy, you know. So, I would like to fire my assistants, but I probably have to fire myself."
That's only a snippet of the full quote, as Izzo talked about Blackwell's family and how he was late to get in on him, and Blackwell committed to Wisconsin early. However, he regrets not being more on recruiting Blackwell.
Hopefully, tomorrow when Wisconsin takes on Michigan State, Blackwell continues to impress Izzo and make him pay for not recruiting him. Being an instrumental part of knocking off another top-10 team, this time the Spartans, and at home.
The Wisconsin vs. Michigan State game is on Fox and starts at 7pm CT.