Tomorrow will see Chris Collins achieve his second NCAA Tournament berth, and with that will come much more legitimacy. It will further validate that what he did with Northwestern basketball in 2016-17 wasn’t just a fluky one-off.
Like Joe Maddon with the Chicago Cubs (108 year World Series title drought) or Collins’ football counterpart at Northwestern (64 year bowl game win drought), he was “the guy” who finally “made it happen.”
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Being able to do so lent him a ton of leeway and credibility as he endured five straight losing seasons after that.
While Collins still has a sub .500 winning percentage, overall, in his career, and league winning percentage of .353, he’s still done a tone of things at Northwestern that nobody else has.
He’s already third all-time in school history for career victories and of the program’s five 20+ win seasons, he owns three of them.
“It was really hard to build it the first time because, when something’s (first ever March Madness berth) not been done in 80 years, it’s not like there hadn’t been people that haven’t tried their hardest, and we were able to do that,” Collins said after the Wildcats lost a Big Ten Tournament quarterfinal heart-breaker to Penn State in overtime.
“That group was awesome. Then we let our momentum slip. We kind of had to start from scratch again. So to build it twice at a place that has no history for basketball is pretty special.
“It’s something that means a lot to me because you can’t do it alone.”
When he says Northwestern has no basketball history, he isn’t kidding.
They do have a national title from 1931, as that team went 16-1, but that was a completely different era, and doesn’t really count the same, as titles were determined by news service voters, not an actual tournament.
Ironically, NU hosted the very first NCAA Tournament national title game in 1939, with Oregon beating Ohio State 46-33, but it’s hard to classify that as “history” as the Cats didn’t win anything.
Collins credited the players and staff for the regular season they had, which included the school’s first ever win over a #1 ranked team and the first time they have been nationally ranked in late February.
“I didn’t score any baskets,” Chris Collins continued.
“I don’t play defense. I’m just a coach. I’m trying to lead these guys and motivate and get them in the right direction. But this is a special group of guys to basically block out the outside noise and say, you know what, we believe in each other.
“We believe in our coaches. We’re going to go out there, and we’re going to show that we can do it, and they did.”
Northwestern was picked to finish 13th out of 14 teams in the Big Ten, back in the preseason. Under Collins’ predecessor, Bill Carmody, NU went to the NIT four straight times. They won some big games here and there, and had a few seasons where they were quite decent.
However, it wasn’t until Chris Collins arrived that they had the breakthrough.
And while the program went right back to leaner times right after that, they are back in the big dance now. Maybe another further breakthrough could be coming this March Madness?
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now. Follow the website on Twitter and Instagram.