Wisconsin Lutheran High School basketball star Zavier Zens has officially committed to play for the University of Illinois next season.

Zavier Zens Makes It Official with the Illini

Zens, a tenacious 6-foot-7, 215-pound senior forward, initially committed to play collegiately for Northern Iowa but reopened his recruitment as the result of a head coaching change, ultimately narrowing his final choices to Illinois, Utah State, and Wisconsin.

On April 17, the highly touted three-star recruit signed a Big Ten Conference Athletics Scholarship Agreement to compete for Illinois, ending the greatly anticipated recruitment journey.

A Chance to Maximize His Development Was the Key

“What I was looking for was the best chance to develop and become the best player I can become,” said Zens, in an interview with Zac Bellman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Illinois, they arguably have the best team in the country coming in next year, and the chance to get to go up against them every day, along with the good development program and their record of developing guys, was really big to me. Obviously, the fit and culture was right as well.”

Illinois tied for second in the Big Ten Conference under the guidance of head coach Brad Underwood, advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four for the first time in 21 years (2005), and finished with a 28-9 overall record.

“Zavier first and foremost is a winner,” said Underwood, in an official release posted on fightingillini.com. “He is an extremely high IQ player who has been well coached and brings a championship pedigree to the table, winning three straight state titles. He fits our recruiting mold as a 6-foot-7 versatile wing who can score at all three levels and process the game.”

Zens Helped Wisconsin Lutheran to a WIAA Three-Peat

Zens averaged 23.4 points per game (including a 61.8% field-goal percentage) with 5.4 rebounds, and 4.4 assists this season in leading the Vikings to a third consecutive WIAA state championship and statement-making 30-0 overall record.

Wisconsin’s Mr. Basketball contributed 20 points with four 3-point baskets, six rebounds, three assists, two blocked shots, and one steal as top-seeded Wisconsin Lutheran defeated third-seeded Madison Memorial 57-37 in the WIAA Division 1 state championship game at the University of Wisconsin’s Kohl Center on March 21.

The 2026 Wisconsin Gatorade Player of the Year finished his memorable four-year high school career with a 109-7 overall record (including an 88-2 mark during the three-year championship run) and as the third-leading scorer in program history (1,611 points).

Zens Continues the Trend of Mr. Wisconsin Playing Out-of-State

In an interesting twist, Zens (a cousin of NBA rookie sensation Kon Knueppel who competes for the Charlotte Hornets) joins an elite group of seven recent Wisconsin Mr. Basketball recipients who opted to play out of state.

Wisconsin, under current head coach Greg Gard, has advanced to the NCAA Tournament eight times, with the fifth-seeded Badgers most recently falling to No. 12-seeded High Point 83-82 in this year’s opening round on March 19.

The impressive list of Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association honorees includes:

2025: Xzavion Mitchell, Oshkosh North (Iowa State)

2023: (co-winner) Milan Momcilovic, Pewaukee (Iowa State)

2023: (co-winner) John Kinzinger, De Pere (Illinois State)

2022: Seth Trimble, Menomonee Falls (North Carolina)

2021: Brandin Podziemski, St. John’s (Illinois, Santa Clara)

— Jeff Hagenau | jeffreyhagenau@gmail.com

WISCONSIN (WBAY) – Wisconsin residents contributed more than $36 million in marijuana taxes to Illinois last year and nearly $6 million to Michigan in 2024, according to new numbers released by the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The revenue comes from counties bordering Wisconsin that legally sell marijuana, while bills to legalize both medical and recreational marijuana remain stalled in the Wisconsin Legislature.

Wisconsin will have a new governor, new speaker in the Assembly and a new majority leader in the state Senate next January.

All three people holding those leadership positions decided not to seek re-election.

State lawmakers will have a fresh debate regarding marijuana for the first time in a while, and the latest numbers from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau are likely to be a big part of it.

Illinois dispensaries generate millions from Wisconsin buyers

On the Wisconsin border, from Michigan to Illinois, marijuana sales have become big business.

“The economic value to restoring this plant back to our economy is huge. We can’t even put a dollar amount on it,” said Jay Selthofner, founder of the Wisconsin Cannabis Activist Network.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo, Wisconsin residents contributed $36.1 million last year to the overall marijuana tax collected by Illinois.

That’s based on data from 36 dispensaries located in five of the six counties bordering Wisconsin. Jo Daviess, Lake, McHenry, Winnebago and Boone counties have dispensaries, while Stephenson County does not.

Among the five counties with dispensaries, a total of $319.4 million in sales was generated. The report concludes $132.4 million, or 41.5%, of these sales were made to out-of-state residents.

“It’s concerning that yeah, revenue is leaving the state both tax wise and tourism dollars without being a state that is looked at as recreational marijuana, we’re losing some tourism there,” Selthofner said.

Michigan collects nearly $6 million in taxes from Wisconsin residents

On the other side of the state, Michigan is making money off Wisconsin residents.

The most recent data from 2024 shows the state with 854 retailers and microbusinesses licensed to sell cannabis. Of those licensees, 22 were located in counties bordering Wisconsin: Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee.

The report states, “Assuming that each retailer/microbusiness makes an equal amount of sales,” those businesses in the Upper Peninsula brought in $85.4 million. Using the same estimate as Illinois, 41.5% of sales came from Wisconsin residents, translating into $5.8 million in tax revenue collected.

Minnesota is also mentioned in the report. The state began legalized cannabis sales in September 2025, but so far there is no data on taxes paid by Wisconsin residents.

Gubernatorial candidates weigh in on legalization

If Wisconsin makes changes, it’s likely to be next year after the November election.

Republican candidate for governor Tom Tiffany said he is open to medical marijuana and supporting veterans.

“I think in particular we should look out for our veterans. I’ve heard from so many veterans that suffer from PTSD and I’m very open to that as well as medicinal. I think we just work our way through it and get to a good spot in regards to marijuana,” Tiffany said.

Among the Democrats running for governor, at least seven have come out supporting efforts to legalize marijuana, aligning with the state party platform.

“A lot of people look at it as the wild west right now here in Wisconsin, it’s not. It’s the wild Wisconsin and what Wisconsin is going to do is it’s going to show the rest of the country how innovative a state can really be on cannabis,” Selthofner said.

Twenty-four states, along with the District of Columbia, legalize recreational marijuana, and 40 total legalize medical marijuana. The most recent additions are Ohio, Minnesota and Missouri.

Everyone talked to Daniel Bice – whether they admitted it or not.

A veteran political reporter, Bice could conjure a politician’s personal phone number in seconds and never feared knocking on the door of someone he was trying to reach. 

Bice, who worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 33 years, died from complications of esophageal cancer on April 21, his birthday. 

He had just turned 62.

“Dan was fearless and fierce, a relentless reporter who wrote with clarity and precision. He knew how to cultivate sources and chase a story,” said Greg Borowski, executive editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He thought nothing of driving five hours to stick a notebook in the governor’s face, willing to ask any question – and take the blowback that came with it.

“His loss is a blow to the community, the profession and especially for our team here.”

A native of West Virginia, Bice started his Wisconsin career in the Madison bureau of the Milwaukee Sentinel and then the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after the two papers merged in 1995.

A few years later, the paper’s leadership wanted a new, buzzy watchdog column and tapped Bice and Cary Spivak, a business reporter, to write it. The pair, nicknamed the “Spice Boys,” earned national awards and scored countless scoops, including one that ended the political career of former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist.

“The two of us working together, it was kind of the odd couple,” Spivak said. “He’s West Virginia, I’m Chicago ‘burbs. But we got along good. We had no sets of rules on how to do stuff, we would just argue it out, but we both had similar news judgment.”

Bice later went on to author his own column, “No Quarter,” where he wrote about scandals big and small, from all sides of the political spectrum. He always responded to readers with a mix of humor and humility, especially his critics, who flooded his email inbox and online chats.

When one called him a “liberal activist” in 2014, Bice pointed to his three critical pieces about Democratic politicians that he had just published the week prior.  “But here’s the lesson,” Bice added. “We should all spend more time paying attention to what I am actually writing and publishing. Then maybe I’ll get a huge raise.”

Even with his column, Bice never stopped reporting the news.

He broke countless stories and distinguished himself among Wisconsin’s press corps with his relentless coverage of Milwaukee County prosecutors’ “John Doe” investigations into Scott Walker’s time as Milwaukee County executive and as governor.

“As someone at a different outlet at the time, it was impossible to keep up with him,” said Mary Spicuzza, who joined the Journal Sentinel in 2015 after covering politics at the Wisconsin State Journal.

“Dan Bice was the most feared man in Wisconsin politics,” she added. “To me, he was larger than life – a legend who became my mentor, my work husband and one of my best friends.”

In recent years, he covered the record-breaking state Supreme Court race between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel, the arrest and resulting court case of former Milwaukee Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, and the campaign of gubernatorial hopeful Bill Berrien, who ended his political run after Bice reported on his online activity.

“I used to kid him that he was equal opportunity in the sense that he’d go after Republicans and Democrats,” said Walker, a Republican and former governor.

“There were times when I liked what he wrote, and there were other times that I didn’t like it at all,” he said. “It probably was a good sign he was pursuing the role of the journalist, which was without regard to politics or other bias, just exposing things that needed to be exposed.”

For all the sharpness of his writing – Milwaukee Magazine once described him “as an assassin with a pen” – Bice hardly ever raised his voice with sources or colleagues. He had a preternatural ability to stay calm even in the most confrontational or tense interviews.

At a retirement celebration for Spivak last summer, Bice gave one of many speeches in his friend’s honor. Bice later told a colleague that he left out the last thing he wanted to thank Spivak for – carrying the column for months while Bice navigated a family crisis – because he feared he would not be able to finish without tears.

Beyond the paper, Bice was an avid music-lover and frequent concert-goer. If you asked if he had heard of a band, he undoubtedly had. He could spend hours discussing politics, history and religion with wit and humor, and he led historical tours to Greece and other countries.

Bice grew up in a household steeped in religious fundamentalism. He earned undergraduate degrees in ancient Greek and English at Bryan College, a small Christian college in Tennessee, and a master’s degree in social science from the University of Chicago.

His college experience shaped him and started to change his career path.

“Parts of my faith started falling apart. I don’t think it ever fell apart completely,” Bice said during a Rotary event last year. “But you know, when you start reading texts in the original language, things aren’t quite as they seem sometimes.”

He noticed a job listing for “liberal arts majors” from the Poynter Institute in Florida, a nonprofit that trains journalists and covers the media industry. He landed one of the coveted 15 positions after more than 350 people applied, and started reporting at the St. Petersburg Times in 1986.

In an early sign of his single-mindedness on a story, he had raced back to the newsroom with the latest from a meeting about a potential baseball stadium development. His mind completely occupied with the story, he didn’t see a red light and hit another car, which then hit a house.

“My editors are wondering where I am, and I’m trying to explain to the cop, this is super important and I’ve got to get back to the newspaper to write this,” Bice recalled during the Rotary talk. “They’re like, you’re not going anywhere.”