Madison — The Wisconsin Badgers basketball team opened their fourth practice up to the media on Thursday. With the season opener just a week-and-a-half away, each practice is becoming more crucial.

BadgerBlitz.com was on hand, and has compiled takeaways from Thursday's practice:

I’ve spent most of these early practice takeaways fawning over the freshmen big man duo of Nolan Winter and Gus Yalden. And they deserve it. But the other incoming freshman, guard John Blackwell, might have just as much potential.

He’s still not the purest point guard, and will need to improve when it comes to leading an offense. But Blackwell has shown real promise almost everywhere else.

There was a specific play in full court 5-on-5 drills where he took the ball up the court and instantly knocked down a pull up mid-range jumper over his defender.

There were other times when Blackwell, 6-foot-4 and 194 pounds, was relegated to the corner in favor of other Badgers ball handlers, but he still made a few corner 3-pointers.

He’s also shown flashes on defense, and can keep up when guarding larger perimeter players.

Blackwell’s highlight of the day, to me, was a possession in which he was guarding AJ Storr in an iso. Storr took the ball from the perimeter, and Blackwell made his life a living hell as he slowly made his way to the basket before throwing up a bad shot.

“He’s a grinder, he plays hard, he wants to win really bad, and you can feel that on the court. It feeds off on other teammates,” Max Klesmit said of Blackwell. “I like playing against him in practice, but it’d be really fun if we could be on the same team a couple times.”

Blackwell is going to have to find room within a packed guard rotation, but he’ll definitely earn some opportunities.

Tyler Wahl returned to Wisconsin for his fifth year and is the oldest player on the team. And as of right now, he’s still the best.

Wahl is just as confident controlling the offense as a playmaker, and even looks niftier when scoring. He had a few impressive post moves, including a turn-around floater over three defenders.

The way he’s looked in practice is just greater confirmation that his injury last year was season-defining. The Badgers were never the same after his injury, and neither was Wahl.

His immensely high value and workload might have contributed to his injury, but it definitely contributed to the team’s fall off after he went down and was still recovering.

UW was 11-2 before Wahl's injury and 6-13 after, excluding the postseason. The loss of a leader like Wahl made the relative inexperience of everyone else even more glaring.

“Last year, I don’t think people really realized how much experience we didn’t have,” Carter Gilmore said. “For a lot of us, it was our first time playing big minutes, or some of us transferring and playing in a new system.”

Given Wisconsin’s acquisition of new talent, and the improvement of existing talent, Wahl shouldn’t have to carry nearly as heavy of a load this year.

He’s still the leader, he’s still the best, but Wisconsin shouldn’t crater without him.

What stood out the most today, more than any specific player or moment, was how well the entire team shot the ball.

All players shoot better in practice, but today was unlike anything we’ve seen so far.

Connor Essegian made multiple deep 3-pointers. Even guys like Winter and Gilmore were lights out.

It’d be much easier to name who didn’t have a few impressive shots.

The success was even more glaring given some of Wisconsin’s struggles last season. Long-distance shooting actually wasn’t a huge problem when compared to the rest of the Big Ten, but their normal field goal percentage was second last in the conference at 41.4%.

They also struggled from the charity stripe, shooting just 69.1%, good for 11th in the Big Ten.

Right before players stretched to close practice, Greg Gard lined all of them up to shoot two free throws each in front of everybody. I only counted two misses, from the entire team.

Like any practice observation, it doesn’t mean anything until we see it in a game, especially when it comes to something as unpredictable as shooting. But if anybody’s looking for a sign that Wisconsin’s poor shooting may be looking up, here it is.

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