ESPN isn’t making a movie about it, but the Northwestern men’s basketball team had its own Season on the Brink eight years ago.

The Wildcats’ rollercoaster 1993-94 season didn’t feature any chair kicking or chokeholds. And it didn’t end with a trip to the NCAA Tournament. But the Cats did have their first winning season in 11 years, their fair share of drama and more than a little bit of March Madness.

The 1993-94 season was destined from the outset to be one of change. The late Ricky Byrdsong inherited the Cats’ head coaching position from Bill Foster, who had amassed seven consecutive losing seasons. The team included five seniors and five juniors with plenty of playing time but not much winning experience.

“To be honest, we were just a bunch of nice guys who were pretty good basketball players,” then-senior guard Todd Leslie says.

Byrdsong, who came to NU from a coaching job at Detroit, installed a staff that included three new assistant coaches and a brand new attitude.

“He was completely different,” Leslie says of Byrdsong. “He was going to change our mental attitude – make us stronger mentally and physically. We just ran a basic motion offense, we learned how to use a pick and how to set a pick. He wanted to instill a toughness (in us) and worry about the X’s and O’s later.”

off to a quirky start

Byrdsong started toughening up his new team upon arriving in the fall, using some interesting methods.

One of the more surprising moves came before the season even began, when senior point guard Patrick Baldwin was stripped of his title as captain. Baldwin, who still holds NU records for career assists and steals, had been the team’s co-MVP and an honorable mention All-Big Ten selection the previous season.

“We were all guys who kind of led by example,” Leslie says. “Patrick definitely, being the point guard.”

Even more bizarre was Byrdsong’s demand that junior Dion Lee change his number from 24 to 10 and his first name from Dion to Kenneth. The coach said he didn’t like anything about “old” Dion.

And then there was the giant Q-Tip, a padded broomstick Byrdsong used to smack his big men during practice to get them accustomed to being fouled.

“He did all this in the first few weeks of the fall,” Leslie says. “Every day at practice you didn’t know what was going to happen next.”

Byrdsong also used some more traditional methods, making players run and do defensive slides back and forth across the floor until they dropped.

The first-year coach was tough on his staff as well, punishing assistant coaches by making them run sprints with the team if they led a drill incorrectly.

“He worked us harder than we had ever worked before,” Leslie says. “By the time the season started, we were so strong it was like everything just fell into place.”

From 9-0 to 0-9

The Cats started the season with nine wins in a single month. NU’s momentum and confidence skyrocketed, and senior forward Kip Kirkpatrick remembers thinking the team was unbeatable the entire month of December.

Leading 42-11 at halftime of one game, Byrdsong gave his team an unusual pep talk: “Let’s just get this over with so we can go watch TV at the hotel,” he said.

“That’s how confident we were,” Leslie remembers.

But that confidence began to wane when the Big Ten season opened with a heartbreaking loss to Purdue. Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson hit a buzzer-beater to give the Boilermakers a 68-67 victory, sending NU on a downward spiral that wouldn’t end until the Cats were 0-9 in the conference.

“These guys were hungry for success, but when you don’t know how to get it, it’s tough,” says Paul Swanson, an assistant coach on the 1993-94 team. “Then when you get it, you don’t know how to keep it.”

By the first week of February, Byrdsong decided that something drastic needed to be done.

Byrdsong made Swanson the head coach and took on the role of the media – he would distract the players by asking questions after practice, and “just try to mess us up,” Kirkpatrick says.

“He challenged us to block him out,” Kirkpatrick adds. “He was sort of a distractor.”

The bizarre week culminated with a game at Minnesota, where Byrdsong roamed the stands during the game, chatting with people and sitting in the aisles.

The stunt gained national attention, and Byrdsong took a two-week leave of absence.

Just weeks earlier, Athletic Director Rick Taylor had been hired.

“I sort of laugh at it now, because they don’t teach you how to handle something like that in Administration 101,” Taylor says. “When it came out, it was something that was quite difficult to deal with.”

According to Taylor, Byrdsong’s wife had voiced some concerns about her husband’s health in the weeks before the Minnesota game, and the leave of absence was mutually agreed upon with the athletic department. Byrdsong apologized for the incident and returned to practice on Feb. 21.

“People talk about Coach (Bob) Knight, who has his own stretches of the inexplicable,” Byrdsong told The Daily after his return. “He can have that title. He does it better than I do.”

Although Byrdsong’s walk on the wild side was a controversy on the national sports scene, it had the Cats’ full support at home.

“I think it was part of a well thought-out plan,” Kirkpatrick says.

And there was no arguing with the results: The Cats completely turned around their season, going .500 the rest of the way.

“We really tried to make that whole thing a cause,” Swanson says. “We won two and got some confidence. Then we got Rick back, and we started getting some momentum.”

Michigan and More

Senior Night at Welsh-Ryan Arena Mar. 12 was do-or-die for Byrdsong and his Cats.

NU needed the win to stay above .500 and remain eligible for the NIT. No. 8 Michigan needed a victory to win the Big Ten title.

“They were playing for the conference championship, and we were playing for our life,” Swanson says.

The Cats won the game 97-93 in overtime.

Two days later, NU beat DePaul in a 69-68 thriller at Welsh-Ryan in the first round of the NIT.

“Those two run together as two of the best victories I ever had,” Kirkpatrick says. “Five of us were seniors, and we had lost a lot of games at Northwestern. Just the experience of winning with those guys and coach Byrdsong was incredible.”

The Cats’ season ended a few days later with a heartbreaking overtime loss to Xavier in the second round of the NIT. It was more March Madness than NU ever expected.

Looking Back

The 1993-94 season was memorable mostly because of the quirky and unforgettable coach Byrdsong, who was shot and killed by a white supremecist while walking down a Skokie street with his children in 1999.

“People that played for him or worked for him or knew him thought he was very special,” Swanson says. “The players knew he really cared about them, not just on the court.”

And Byrdsong led his team through the full range of emotions throughout the 1993-94 season.

“We really went through it all,” Swanson says. “From the highs of being 9-0 to the lows of being 0-9. It certainly was an amazing season.”

1993-94 highlights

_Ѣ Went .500 in Big Ten play after coach Ricky Byrdsong took personal leave of absence

_Ѣ Beat No. 8 Michigan in regular-season finale to assure postseason eligibility and deny Wolverines the conference title

_Ѣ Won first-round NIT game against DePaul, 69-68, at sold-out Welsh-Ryan Arena

_Ѣ Lost overtime game to Xavier in second round of NIT in another Welsh-Ryan sellout

_Ѣ Four players averaged at least 10 ppg

_Ѣ Center Kevin Rankin, currently playing professionally in Europe, averaged 15.9 ppg