There was no Midnight Madness, but there was an early morning wake-up call for the Northwestern men’s and women’s basketball teams.
The Wildcats men’s squad, which returns four starters from a team that finished tied for fifth in the Big Ten last season, officially opened its season Saturday with a 10 a.m. team practice.
“I’m sort of anxious to get going,” men’s coach Bill Carmody said. “I slept in my (warm-up suit) last night. It’s like my Little League uniform, so I’m ready to go.”
NU will ring in the beginning of the men’s and women’s basketball seasons with Halloween Hoop-la following NU’s home football game against Purdue on Oct. 30. The free event at Welsh-Ryan Arena will feature player introductions and other activities, said Tracie Hitz of NU’s athletic marketing department.
The NU women’s basketball team also took the court Saturday with a practice before and after the men’s practice. The Cats are in their first season under coach Beth Combs and have added five new players to their program since the end of last season: four freshman and a transfer from Boston University.
The NCAA permits coaches to have individual sessions with their players once school starts, but since NU begins much later than other schools, Combs and Carmody have had only three weeks to work with their players.
“As a coach in the last four months, you haven’t really been with your guys to much,” Carmody said. “It seems like it’s been a long time.”
Notable basketball programs such as Kentucky and Duke have their first practices at midnight, which marks the first moment when the NCAA allows teams to begin practicing.
These exhibitions draw large crowds, as did Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness on Friday night, and they are aimed to generate fun and student support for the upcoming season.
Cats’ forward Bernard Cote, a Kentucky transfer who will sit out the upcoming season for NU, said the midnight practices are a great way to kick off the season but also said they don’t accomplish much.
“Usually when you have midnight madness, you practice the day after anyway,” Cote said. “Actually I like the (10 a.m. practice) better because you get a little time to rest the night before.”
Carmody said he would consider having a midnight practice, but only if he knew the support would be there.
“If I knew they were going to fill (Welsh-Ryan Arena), then I’d do it,” he said. “So if you get me 8,000 people here next year, I’ll do a Midnight Madness.”
But to have the kind of anticipation and fervor associated with the first practice of the season, a team needs to have a great season the year before, NU forward Davor Duvancic said.
Kentucky and Duke are both perennial powerhouses with large fan bases. The two schools are also regularly among the nation’s elite teams while the Cats missed out on a possible postseason berth to the National Invitation Tournament because of a sub-.500 record last year.
NU will have to replace Jitim Young, who is now playing professionally in Greece for Panellinios Athens and led the Cats in almost every statistical category as a senior last season
The Cats will be led by junior point guard T.J. Parker, junior shooting guard Mohamed Hachad and junior forward Vedran Vukusic. The Cats also return Duvancic, Ivan Tolic and Vince Scott in the front court and 3-point specialist Evan Seacat.
NU will also get a boost from the addition of 6-foot-10 center Michael Thompson, who sat out last season after transferring from Duke, swingman Tim Doyle, who sat out last season after transferring from St. John’s and three freshman.
The luxury of having more bodies should bode well for the Cats. After sometimes using an eight-man rotation because of injuries last season, numbers shouldn’t be a problem. There were 16 players on the floor for practice Saturday.
“We had coaches playing last year (during scrimmages),” Duvancic said. “That wasn’t really a practice going against 40-year-old guys.”
Reach Zach Silka at [email protected].
