Jack Janicki reflects on injury recovery heading into NCAA Tournament
Wisconsin guard Jack Janicki opened up about his 'mentally challenging' recovery after injuring his wrist on Feb. 17 against Ohio State.
PORTLAND, OR – Wisconsin guard Jack Janicki has yet to rewatch the play where he suffered his wrist injury that sidelined him for the rest of the 2025-26 regular season. “I just haven’t really gotten around to wanting to,” Janicki said. The redshirt sophomore does not need to rewatch it either to remember it in precise detail.
It was late in the first half of the Badgers’ Feb. 17 loss at Ohio State . As he was falling, he remembered last year’s fall at Minnesota where he broke a tooth.
“I can’t break this tooth; that will be excruciating,” Janicki remembers thinking while midair. “So I stopped the fall obviously with my wrist. … I landed on my rib and hip, and that was an initial shock of losing your air and then my hip hurting.
” After the shock wore off and as he was in the Schottenstein Center locker room at halftime, his wrist was shaking and in “10-out-of-10 pain. ” He knew at that point that he needed to get imaging, and he has yet to see game action this season. Janicki has made substantial progress in the month since that halftime realization – March 16 marked his return to practice, and he practiced with his wrist wrapped on March 18 – but he also has more work to do before possibly returning to game action for the Badgers in the men's NCAA Tournament .