If your bracket is busted and you need a bandwagon to hop on for the remainder of March Madness, let me direct you to Wisconsin senior Nigel Hayes, the most lovable player in the NCAA tournament. While he’s been to two Final Fours and two Sweet 16s, it’s his personality that shines the most. Hayes is a one-of-a-kind player and we must cherish the time he has left with the Wisconsin Badgers.
Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes is the most lovable player in NCAA tournament
The Wisconsin senior is a delight on and off the court.
Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images
He knows his basketball history
If you weren’t aware of Nigel Hayes before this weekend, you probably learned his name after this game-winner to knock out top-seeded Villanova.
But it wasn’t just the game-winner that was special. It was that he accurately compared it to this Michael Jordan highlight against the New York Knicks in the 1991 NBA playoffs. Hayes wasn’t even born until 1994, but he knew exactly what he had done.
He stands up for what he believes in
Hayes showed up at College GameDay this past fall with a sign that got a lot of attention. He took a stand for student-athletes not being properly paid while making enormous amounts of money for their schools and conferences. He backed it up on Twitter, noting that the Big Ten made nearly $450 million in one year, while his scholarship is only worth around $160,000 over four years.
He also spoke out against the hypocrisy of the NCAA letting schools use different basketballs based on their own sponsorship deals.
”It’s definitely different. Personally, we don’t like it too much. I don’t like the Under Armour ball whatsoever. But that’s the way this amateur sports league is set up. We’re supposed to be having fun, but all the money is in these basketballs that colleges play with. But it’s an amateur sport, we’re just here for fun. It’s not really that serious. So I guess any ball should be OK.
“Maybe we should have a universal ball like the NBA. You don’t go to the Clippers’ stadium and play with a Nike and then go to Golden State and play with a Rawlings. But in this amateur sport of college, where money isn’t the goal — it’s the student education and experience that you get — we play with a million different basketballs.”
For someone who acknowledged part of the reason he returned for his senior year was to complete his college degree, Hayes is the perfect athlete to take on the NCAA.
He gives back to those who support him
Hayes told students at Wisconsin that if they sold out season tickets for the 2016-17 season in less than five minutes, he would buy them all donuts. Well, the tickets sold out in three minutes. The previous record was seven minutes. Hayes kept his promise, got donuts, and passed them out to each student who purchased tickets.
He drops the mic when necessary
Hayes is from Toledo, Ohio, yet he chose Wisconsin over the Ohio State Buckeyes. While he might have considered choosing Ohio State, it seems those days are long gone.
When told during the game against Ohio State that Wisconsin had three Ohio players on the court at one time when Ohio State had zero, this was Nigel’s response:
“They got the guys they wanted. I’ll take my two Final Fours and my wins and I’ll carry on my merry way. Mic drop.”
He literally dropped the mic.
He wears his emotions on his sleeve
Earlier this season, Hayes had the perfect reaction to this flop from an Oklahoma player. This should be the standard reaction to all flops moving forward.
And he’s just downright funny
He seriously spent a summer crashing weddings. Here is one of the four he admitted to crashing. All of the wedding parties seemed legitimately happy to have him there.
In 2015, he developed a new appreciation for stenographers, going out of his way during a press conference to throw out words like “antidisestablishmentarianism” and “cattywampus” to give the stenographers a little extra work.
But maybe his most endearing moment is the time he embarrassed himself during a press conference with a live mic. Hayes forgot the microphone was still on while he said that a woman in Wisconsin’s press conference was “beautiful.”
If you need a bit of a feel-good story to cheer for in 2017, then Nigel Hayes is your guy. He’s a wonderfully talented player on the court, but what he brings off the court is just as powerful.
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