As other Big Ten teams will be younger this season, Northwestern basketball will be older and better. How much better? Probably enough to make the NIT, as the Wildcats schedule should easily get them to 18 or maybe 19 wins. Seriously, their non-conference schedule is softer than Kevin James’ belly. It’s the weakest its been in many years.
Losing forward Vic Law for the season, which we learned about yesterday, really throws a crimp into those projected plans.
Law will undergo surgery on a torn labrum in his left shoulder and will miss the 2015-16 season.
“We’re certainly disappointed for Vic,” said Northwestern head men’s basketball coach Chris Collins. “He dedicated himself and made great progress during this offseason, and had a great summer and preseason on the court. I have no doubt that his attitude toward recovery and improvement will be relentless and that he will continue to be a tremendous teammate. We expect a full recovery in 4-6 months and Vic remains a foundational piece of our program for the future.”
Law was a great three-point shooter, but otherwise lacked production on the offensive end during his freshman year. Law, a highly rated recruited from St. Rita, was much more developed defensively, than he was offensively. If Collins is going to achieve anything than his predecessor Bill Carmody did not, he’ll certainly need Vic Law to do it.
Here’s where I have this Northwestern basketball team to finish where I have for my RedEye Big Ten season preview, I don’t expect to win any new friends. Here’s my Big Ten projection and rationale for each team (we went with an outer space theme in this year’s piece, so that explains the “space status”)
We heard “1908” ad nauseam this baseball postseason with the Cubs. The college basketball version is Northwestern, which never has made the NCAA tournament. By now this narrative might make your eyes roll. Coach Chris Collins has a good rebuilding role model in Cubs President Theo Epstein, and just like with the Cubs, it may be Year 4 that the master plan shows real progress.
Quotable: “If we go out and play with 70-plus years of not going to the tournament on our shoulders, we’re gonna crack. That’s not what I want for this team.” — NU coach Chris Collins on the school’s NCAA tournament drought
Space status: Grounded
Led by Romanian 7-footer Alex Olah, whose name opponents often mispronounce as “Olaf” from Disney’s “Frozen,” the Wildcats return 88 percent of their points and 78 percent of their rebounds from last season. Even if they miss the tourney, it’s time to “Let It Go” with that storyline.
That was published before the news of Law’s season-ending injury broke. NU seemed like a 7th-10th kind of team before. Now they’re more like a 9th-12th place kind of squad. Again, they’ll enter conference season with a really nice record, but once the real games begin, the contests that people really start to care about are underway, well it’s anybody’s guess where Northwestern basketball fits into the pecking order.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and sometimes writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. The website is also featured on News Now.
Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye. He also appears regularly on numerous television and radio talk shows all across the country. Catch him Tuesdays on KOZN 1620 The Zone.