This could be the year Northwestern makes NCAA tourney
Chris Collins came to Northwestern with the same mission as every men’s head basketball coach before him: Get the Wildcats to the NCAA tournament.
So far, no coach has achieved that goal — though Bill Carmody’s teams came agonizingly close a few times. But no coach — until Collins, now — has had a team this well-positioned, with just more than a week left until February.
Northwestern is 16-4 (5-2 in Big Ten play) and tied with Purdue for third place in the Big Ten standings. The Wildcats’ four losses all came to teams ranked inside the RPI’s top 50. Two losses came on the road (Butler, Michigan State), and one was played on a neutral floor (Notre Dame). Every prominent bracketologist currently has Northwestern in the field in mock brackets dated Jan. 22, as a No. 7, 8 or 9 seed.
There’s a lot to like about this team, and the way its best players have stepped up in big moments this season, such as Scottie Lindsey in Sunday’s win at Ohio State, the first Wildcats win in Columbus since 1977.
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There’s a lot to like about this team’s résumé to date, too. There’s also — obviously — a lot of the season left to be played, in a somewhat unusual season for the Big Ten. It’s a strange year when Michigan State is ranked behind Northwestern in both KenPom and RPI, and Indiana is comparable to the Wildcats.
No Big Ten teams are in the RPI’s top 10, and one of the two in the top 25 already has played and beaten Northwestern. What does this mean? Well, essentially, that there are few opportunities for marquee wins on the Cats’ remaining schedule — and plenty of mediocre Big Ten teams who could deliver damaging blows to their tournament résumé.
Still, it’s time to write a familiar sentence that brims with hope: This could be the year Northwestern makes the NCAA tournament for the very first time.
The Wildcats are the only longstanding member of a power conference to never make the tournament. They haven’t even posted a winning record in conference play since 1968 — another streak that will likely need to be broken in order to get a ticket to the big dance.
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No pressure.
“It’s the elephant in the room,” Collins told USA TODAY Sports before the season. “It’s going to be a national story. It’s the Cubs winning the World Series. We don’t run from it, but we also don’t talk much about it.
“I’m a huge Cubs fan, have been my whole life. I loved the way those guys played. They played with a free spirit. They didn’t look like they were feeling the pressure of 100 years. I want our guys to play free.”
That’s easier said than done, of course. The weight of Northwestern’s beleaguered history will only get heavier as March approaches. But if anyone is willing to carry it, it’s this Northwestern team and this Northwestern coach.
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