Nigel Hayes probably isn’t the best player on a Wisconsin team that includes both talented big man Ethan Happ and perimeter sniper Bronson Koenig. However, Hayes has long been the most entertaining member of the Badgers and, on Saturday evening, the veteran forward made the biggest shot of the evening as Wisconsin sprung an upset over No. 1 overall seed Villanova.
In the aftermath, Hayes spoke with CBS reporter Allie LaForce and he compared himself to Michael Jordan. No, really, he did. This isn’t the first time that Hayes has been in the news for something that transpired with a hot microphone in front of him but, this time, he made sure to shoot his shot.
“We wanted to get me isolated on the wing,” Hayes said. “I felt like I could take him. The way they’ve been playing the game, they’ve been crowding me, so I knew I would have the baseline. I drove baseline and if you guys are familiar with the Michael Jordan highlight, the fake spin-back, I did the my fake spin-back, got to my left hand and fortunately it went in.”
While Hayes, who finished the game with an impressive 19 points and eight rebounds, did not expressly say he was on Jordan’s level or anything of that sort, it is always fun to see solid but unspectacular college players evoking the name of the best to ever do it.
Nigel Hayes earned the recognition that comes with knocking down a game-winner on the sport’s biggest stage and, in short, he didn’t let the moment pass without pounding his chest a bit.
