I thought about giving Northwestern credit for giving an inspired effort against the No. 12 team in the nation, but does it really matter if effort isn’t translating into wins? The Wildcats’ problem isn’t that they don’t try to win, they’re just not on a level playing field.

I probably didn’t notice it before because I didn’t want to, but the Cats don’t have the players to compete in the Big Ten. They stay afloat because they have a coach and a system that brings teams down to their level, but squads like Michigan State don’t fall that far most of the time. It showed in the Spartans’ 77-66 victory Saturday.

NU doesn’t have the personnel to combat players with the athletic prowess of Michigan State’s Maurice Ager, Shannon Brown and Paul Davis, who all executed highlight-reel dunks in a close first half.

Cats forward Vedran Vukusic would start for Michigan State, but I don’t see anyone else on NU doing much if they played on the other side. This is nothing against the current players at NU, as most are Division I caliber. I’m just not sure how many would play on an NCAA Tournament-quality team.

When NU went 8-8 in the Big Ten two seasons ago, coach Bill Carmody was voted the Big Ten Coach of the Year by the media even after finishing with a losing record overall. The voters realized how hard it was to win with what he had.

But he’s not without his faults. He’s one of the best coaches in the Big Ten, but there’s no rule that says NU can’t have at least close to the talent other conference teams do.

If you’ve ever talked to Carmody, you can hear the obvious problem with him as a recruiter – he’s honest. I don’t see him telling a recruit he’ll start right away when there’s really no chance of that happening. I don’t see him in a prep star’s living room telling him he won’t have to do work and will find easy classes to get through NU. I see him telling potential players the truth, which unfortunately eliminates a lot of the best talent.

What he ends up with is players that actually have futures if they don’t make it in basketball, unlike many of the programs in the nation.

But Carmody cannot continue to field teams like this and expect to succeed in the Big Ten. He’s earning more wins than most coaches in the country would with the same lineup, but it’s not enough.

He doesn’t need to try and sway NU’s office of admissions into taking high schoolers that spend their senior year taking the SAT multiple times just trying to qualify for admittance into a university, but there must be something in between.

Duke and Stanford bring in top-notch recruits, and those schools beat NU academically and in basketball. So what’s the solution?

I don’t know the answer, but Carmody and his assistants need to figure it out.

Carmody was the best coach for the program when he was hired in 2000, and he still is. He can be the coach to take NU to its first NCAA tournament, but it won’t happen until he learns how to lure high school stars to Evanston.

I can’t help but imagine what he could do with Ager, Brown or Davis.

Deputy sports editor Abe Rakov is a Medill Sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected].