Chris Collins “said all the right things” yesterday following his team’s rather decisive defeat at the hands of a desperate Indiana Hoosiers team. IU never really let NU have a chance Thursday night, as the Hoosiers were playing with their NCAA chances (and perhaps even Tom Crean’s job security) hanging in the balance.
The Hoosiers played with the sense of urgency that Illinois should have had, but lacked, earlier in the day. Following the loss, Chris Collins made it official that his Northwestern Wildcats would not be playing in the CBI.
Which is the right call. It’s kind of ridiculous that we even have a CBI and a CIT to begin with. I understand and accept that this is the “everyone gets a trophy generation,” but c’mon already. (Tom Izzo shares my worldview on this issue)
Collins made the correct decision because his team needs the offseason to rest and get healthy. They have a preseason tour overseas to prepare for.
Collins told the media last night that his team has shown progress in year two, but every coach says that.
The proverbial “saying all the right things,” and “winning the press conference” are actually misnomers in reality. To win the presser only means that you did a fine job articulating the proper coachspeak cliches and espoused establishment platitudes to preserve the status quo. Fans only care about winning games not winning press conferences, and Collins hasn’t really done that yet.
Collins told the media “the proof is in the pudding,” an old adage that his football counterpart, Pat Fitzgerald, has been known to say on occasion. However, where’s the proof that NU fans will get the pudding next year? They’ve certainly had their vegetables. They’ve been waiting a mighty long time for dessert.
Of course, Chris Collins is going to say Northwestern made progress in year two, and perhaps they truly have behind closed doors, but we haven’t seen it yet with on-the-court product. Absolutely NU got better as the reason went along; Collins is 100% correct about that.
However, when you suffer some bad losses to mid-majors in the pre-conference and you start 1-10 in league play, there’s nowhere to go but up. So they only rose from the bottom.
You can credit Collins’ team for not packing it in and still showing fight along the way. They definitely played their best basketball towards the end of the year, and showed a lot of desire and passion. The Cats really showed a lot of emotion as the season ended; especially the seniors, who won’t play this game at this level ever again.
However, fans don’t care about heart, soul, grit, chutzpah, desire, passion, cajones etc. They only care about Ws and Ls, and the result here was not a true improvement.
A #10 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, and getting blown out by a very mediocre Indiana team is not an improvement from Chris Collins year one. The 2014-15 Northwestern Wildcats did not accomplish anything that the 2013-14 Northwestern Wildcats didn’t also accomplish. They didn’t come any closer to making the NIT, let alone the NCAAs, in Collins’ second year, and they’re not yet at the level of Bill Carmody during the highlight years of his regime.
Carmody won 20 games twice, and went to the NIT four years in a row. For a full four years, the shelf life of a college player, Carmody was able to win at a 40% clip in Big Ten play. That’s the standard Chris Collins should be able to show us in year three. If he can get the Cats to win 40% of league games and get the program back to the NIT, it would be something.
Then you can honestly say that the program is trending upward. Perhaps when we explore this topic again next March we’ll be able to say that Collins has conveyed progress. We can’t say it this March though.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. You can read Banks’ feature stories and op-eds in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and hear his regular guest spots on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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