Zach Kinziger on His Practice Highlight That Made Greg Gard 'Lose His Mind'

Wisconsin's rising sophomore guard was quite impressive behind the scenes in '25-26.

Wisconsin Badgers guard Zach Kinziger. | Craig Strobeck-Imagn Images

Badger basketball had a deep, strong rotation in 2025-26 — four-star freshman Zach Kinziger from De Pere, Wisconsin was the No. 7 guard on the team in terms of minutes per game.

Still, there was a time when Kinziger wasn't going to play at all. Again, the Badgers boasted a strong, top-heavy rotation in their backcourt. With two star guards in Nick Boyd and John Blackwell, plus a handful of experienced, capable veterans in Andrew Rohde, Braeden Carrington and Jack Janicki, Kinziger had his work cut out for him to earn minutes.

Initially, the uphill climb to playing time looked insurmountable. With too many players ahead of him, Janicki considered asking his coaches to redshirt him during his freshman year, he said on Brian Butch's Butchie's Den podcast:

“I went to Coach Gard, kinda noticed that I might not be in the rotation right away. Talked to him about potentially redshirting; if I’m only gonna play towards the end of the game when it doesn’t really matter, might as well save my year. And all the coaches were really good about that," he said.

Initially, all sides seemed aligned on Kinziger sitting out his freshman campaign and taking a developmental year while watching/learning from afar. But as the skilled combo guard continued to impress in practice on the scout team, the Badgers' coaching staff started to take notice.

Kinziger turns heads in practice

Soon, it became evident that Kinzger was more than capable of contributing as a freshman. Relegated to the scout team, he still got plenty of chances to show what he can do against Badgers' starters.

“One day, I was on the scout team…It was one of those days where everything was falling," he said. "I got a switch onto John Blackwell, and I hit him with a between cross, got him shifted the complete other way and went down and got an and-1 on Aussie (Austin Rapp). Coach Gard kinda lost his mind a little bit."

Kinzger says moments liked that helped his confidence grow immensely, even if he wasn't yet seeing actual playing time. But by late December, guard had made enough of an impression that Wisconsin's coaching staff had seen enough — it was time to get the former blue-chip scoring machine some minutes.

Wisconsin Badgers guard Zach Kinziger. | Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

“Coach Gard came up to me, said you’ve been playing pretty well in practice, we might need to use you, whether it’s for a couple minutes a game or foul trouble or just a spark off the bench, because we think you could provide something for us," he said.

Kinziger played his first game on Dec. 22 against Central Michigan. He notched six points, one rebound and two assists, hitting 2-of-4 shots from distance. That was one of his better stat-lines of the season; Kinziger still has plenty of work to do in his development.

Still, the promising young guard has been generating buzz behind the scenes in Madison for a while now; it'll be fascinating to see what kind of leap he can take in 2026-27.