Recruiting at the Division I level must be a pride-swallowing proposition, but few can stomach more than Northwestern’s Kevin O’Neill.

Dress up in a gorilla suit? Not a problem. Send cutesie-pie letters with “WE WANT YOU!!!” capitalized for emphasis? If that’s what it takes.

Recruiting isn’t much more than an elementary school Valentine’s Day party. Coaches essentially hand out little cards that say, “I like you. Do you like me? Check this box.”

Coaches are like little boys, dreaming about the little redhead girl in the front row. Except in these fantasies, the little redhead can break the press and hit the three.

But now two of O’Neill’s most special Valentines, forward Steve Lepore and guard David Newman, have had enough. Freshman center Brody Deren said he is considering leaving as well.

The players’ family members say it’s a clash of styles with the coach. Translation: They don’t want to play for a coach who almost daily invents new swear words to hurl at them.

The same aggressive style that gets O’Neill into the living rooms of prospects eventually drives them away once they are players. It’s one thing when a big-time college coach whispers an off-color joke into the ear of a recruit; it’s a little different when the recruit becomes the player and the butt of the joke.

It will take all of O’Neill’s vaunted recruiting efforts to straighten out the NU program. What selling points can he possibly use?

NU was the first team since 1991 to suffer through a winless Big Ten season. Four key players have quit the team since October and a fifth may soon join them.

And of course, the university has been sued by the family of a former recruit who asserts that O’Neill rescinded a scholarship offer he had guaranteed both verbally and in writing.

When O’Neill’s breathless e-mails and handwritten letters become People’s Exhibits A and B, the program has a problem.

For all his red-faced fury, his withering one-liners and his sideline tantrums, O’Neill had no off-the-cuff, quote-a-minute gems to distribute Tuesday in the wake of the defections.

Instead he did the classy thing, parroting the party line about wishing good luck to his ex-players.

It’s a role he’s playing with increasing frequency of late. When guard Sean Wink called it quits last October, amid speculation that he no longer wanted to absorb O’Neill’s verbal thrashings, the coach gave a colorless quote about respecting Wink’s decision.

Center Aron Molnar, the team’s only senior, folded in November, citing personal reasons.

He left behind a team that became the youngest in the nation — and the Wildcats played like it. Six points total in the first half against Illinois. Down 45-15 at halftime on national television against Penn State. A humiliating loss to Oakland, a Division I program for just two years.

The Cats didn’t win a game in the Big Ten this season and finished with an abysmal 5-25 record.

No one envisioned this type of season when O’Neill’s persistence paid off in inking players like Newman and Lepore to scholarships.

Newman won Iowa’s Mr. Basketball award and Lepore led the U.S. Junior National Team in scoring last summer.

But now they are gone, and so may be Deren, a stocky 6-foot-7 center who plays bigger than he is.

Newman and Lepore declined to explain why they are leaving. It’s likely they never will, at least publicly.

But when four players — all of them former, present or would-be starters — quit the team in the span of little more than a season, they’re not griping about something as mundane as playing time.

O’Neill makes no apologies for who he is: a gruff, profane, incredibly funny coach who’s good enough for the top college conference in the country.

He made his name on recruiting. The players he brought to Tennessee were the ones this season who, as seniors, briefly diverted attention from that school’s vaunted woman’s program.

But O’Neill left those guys behind to come here and now must watch the players he brought to Evanston leave him behind.

Let’s hope he’s got more Valentines up his sleeve.