It was so hot the wood floor was buckling.
Future Wildcats Vedran Vukusic and Davor Duvancic were running up and down the court that summer day in 2001, hustling in the 116-degree heat. They played for an hour and forty minutes in the Split, Croatia, gym, watched by Northwestern coach Bill Carmody.
“No one said a word,” Carmody said. “You go into a gym like that here and everyone would be complaining, but they were all playing hard.”
To Carmody, Vukusic had all the talents — he could dribble, pass and rebound. The only thing Vukusic lacked, the coach told his assistants, was shooting ability.
Needless to say, Carmody was more than a little surprised when his Croatian swingman started his freshman season by hitting his first seven 3-pointers and 13 of his first 14 from beyond the arc.
“There might be some question as to my evaluation,” Carmody said.
After Vukusic emerged as one of Carmody’s favorites that season, the coach hoped he would play an even wider role in his sophomore year. But it didn’t happen, as Vukusic went down for the season with a shoulder injury in the season’s second exhibition game.
Carmody blames Vukusic’s injury, at least in part, for NU’s struggles last year. The Cats were coming off a 16-13, 7-9 Big Ten season — their best conference finish since the 1982-1983 campaign — and the NU faithful were looking for another strong year.
But the Cats faltered in Carmody’s third season, finishing with a 12-17 record and notching just three conference wins.
Creating a winning program hasn’t been easy for Carmody, as the quick-witted coach has been forced to combat a losing tradition and the recruiting disadvantages that come with strict academic standards. Still, now in his fourth season at NU, Carmody is coaching a healthy Vukusic and all of his own recruits — except for the team’s leading scorer, Jitim Young — and the Cats’ first NCAA Tournament berth could be within reach.
‘HE LIKES TO TALK SMACK’
Carmody brought the famous “Princeton offense” with him to Evanston, a system consisting of sharp cuts, quick passes and careful shot selection. The offense, which Carmody perfected in his 18 seasons (the first 14 as an assistant) with the Tigers, has made Carmody something of a legend in the coaching fraternity.
Two seasons ago, Sports Illustrated’s college basketball writer, a Princeton alum, named Carmody one of the top 15 offensive coaches in the college game.
“Who could agree with that and not sound like a jerk?” Carmody said. “I just like to see the ball move, with no one worried about who’s shooting or how many shots someone else took.”
He’s even impressed his old mentor and boss Pete Carril, who developed the offense in his 30 years as the Tigers’ head coach.
“I hate to say it, but in some ways he’s better,” Carril said. “He’s put in some different wrinkles there.”
The offense is used by just a handful of coaches in Divison I, including Air Force’s Joe Scott, who served as an assistant to Carmody at Princeton. Scott remembers the glory days, back when the Tigers were beating teams like Georgetown, Wake Forest and UNLV.
“The more you win, the more the pressure is on you,” Scott said. “I think we should have taken a step back and enjoyed the moment a little bit more.”
Although Carmody couldn’t always relax at Princeton, he has injected a light-hearted atmosphere into NU basketball — a welcome change from former coach Kevin O’Neill, who was known for his cursing ability.
Carmody rarely swears on the court, preferring constructive cricticsm and the occasional sarcastic comment. Last season, whenever Frenchman T.J. Parker made a mistake on the court, the coach would rile his player with some anti-Franco sentiments.
“He likes to talk smack all the time,” Parker said. “But he’s a great guy, he’s fun to play for.”
Carmody perfected his comedic timing during four years as the point guard on the Union College basketball team. The Dutchmen went 59-11 in his career, but that didn’t keep Carmody — then known as “Billy” — from occasionally laying into his teammates.
“If you happened to lay an egg sometime, then that was fodder for him to remind you of it for time to come,” said John Denio, Carmody’s backcourt mate at Union from 1972-1975.
RECRUITiNG DISADVANTAGES
Although Carmody nabbed Parker, a member of the French Junior National Team, in his second recruiting class, he’s had limited success bringing top recruits to Evanston.
It’s not easy to convince a high school senior to come to a school without a winning tradition.
But for Tim Doyle, a sophomore transfer from St. John’s, committing to NU was an easy decision — at least the second time around.
Doyle, who had long wanted to play for the Red Storm, found St. John’s fast, disorganized style of play didn’t suit his talents. So he decided to transfer to NU, a team with a coach who values his cutting and passing ability.
“He’s an East Coast guy, I’m an East Coast guy,” Doyle said in his thick Long Island accent. “I think I pick up his humor a little better than most of the kids on the team, especially the foreigners. Some of the things he says go over their heads.”
Doyle, who can’t play this season before of NCAA transfer rules, makes up half of Carmody’s recent recruiting class. The coach has given out just 10 of his 13 available scholarships but said he didn’t want to waste the remainder on mediocre players.
That’s what happened nearly four years ago, when O’Neill rushed to replace four players who transferred from NU, bringing in recruits like Ed McCants, Casey Cortez, Drew Long and Harry Good just before the 2000-2001 season. All those players would now be seniors but none is still on the team.
So when center Thomas Soltau and forward Jimmy Maley left NU in the middle of last season, Carmody wasn’t so worried about finding replacements. He also understands transferring is part of college basketball.
“Some for grades, some get married, some start playing guitar instead of basketball,” Carmody said.
And Carmody’s lucky — he doesn’t have to worry about kids leaving his program early to play at a higher level.
“The problem in college is that they have that damn NBA taking all of their players,” said Carril, now a Sacramento Kings assistant coach. “That’s not true of NU — they have to go to school there.”
Other players decide not to join the Cats because of NU’s academic reputation, but that’s immaterial to Parker, who carries a 2.8 GPA.
“It’s not hard,” he said. “You just go to class and do your homework and you’ll do fine.”
Carmody said he’d like to find more players from Illinois, like Peoria Central’s Brandon Lee, who signed a National Letter of Intent on Nov. 13. But he’s also scouring the nation and the world — especially Europe — for talent. That’s a luxury he didn’t always have at Princeton, since the Ivy League doesn’t allow schools to give scholarships.
“You don’t have to inquire about financial aid and what is your father making and all that crap,” Carril said.
BUILDING A TRADITION
Back in his days at Princeton, Carmody used to sit around with his assistants and talk about other coaching jobs.
There weren’t many schools on the coach’s wish list, but Northwestern — along with Duke, Notre Dame and Stanford — always stood out above the others.
So when the Wildcats came calling in September 2000, Carmody jumped, taking the job just days after it opened. Although Carmody went 92-25 in four years with the Tigers, including a 27-2 campaign in 1997-1998, he was drawn to the Cats’ futile basketball program.
“I could never understand why you can’t win here,” Carmody said. “I believed then and I believe now that you can be a good basketball player and a good student and we can get a bunch of those guys.”
Three years into his NU career, Carmody has gone 39-49, recording a 13-35 record in the Big Ten. That’s not bad for a coach who took over a program that
went 5-25 and didn’t win a conference game the year before he arrived.
The first season was strange for Carmody, who had never been part of a losing program.
“Every time we we won a game, it was like it was a new record,” Carmody said. “Holy Mackerel. People were starved, and we don’t want that situation.”
Carmody couldn’t have prepared himself for the stigma of losing at NU. Fans of most other Big Ten teams expect their squad to finish in the top half of the conference each season, perhaps even making the NCAA Tournament. But NU has never made an appearance in the Big Dance and advanced to the National Invitational Tournament just four times.
Throughout the nation, the Cats are known as the perennial doormat of the Big Ten.
“That’s the only negative about this whole place,” Carmody said. “Now how important is that (reputation) to a kid? Does he want to be part of the first team to go to the NCAA Tournament?”
While Carmody’s second season, when the Cats fell just short of an NIT berth, exceeded expectations, the coach remains patient with the building process.
“I think he has it on track where you are going to see NU having winning seasons every year,” said Scott, the former Carmody assistant. “And that takes time. Usually years four and five are when you start to see the imrovement.”
