Jimmy Maley was the first to go.
About 10 games into his freshman season, Maley became aware of the strain of Division I athletics. As the year wore on, the exhaustion became unbearable. He would spend practices hunched over puking and heaving, then return home aching from head to toe. Fatigue begat fatigue, and soon he found himself unable to focus on schoolwork and unable to keep his weight – he estimates he lost about 20 pounds over the course of the season.
After Northwestern’s 24th game, Jimmy called it quits. The skinny 6-foot-6 forward averaged 4.6 points in 19.7 minutes. He played 21 games, starting 11.
Ivan Tolic went next.
His knee problems began before he arrived in the United States for his freshman year, and they only worsened with time. As a freshman he underwent two knee surgeries and took a medical redshirt. As a redshirt sophomore during the 2004-05 season he appeared in just two games before knee problems forced him to the bench. He went under the knife for a third and fourth time. By the end of the season, he had decided the pain just wasn’t worth it.
The 6-9 center averaged 0.6 points and 1.4 rebounds in 9.5 minutes. He played 23 games, starting 13.
T.J. Parker’s exit was the most surprising of them all.
The point guard who coach Bill Carmody had called “quick as grease lightning” before the 2004-05 season chose to forgo his senior year for professional basketball. He always did seem a bit too flashy for the NU program. As a freshman he led the team in minutes played. As a junior, after draining game-winners against Portland and Minnesota, he earned a reputation as a clutch player. As the younger brother of NBA star Tony Parker, he acted the part of stud athlete, flashing smiles that got bigger as the lights got brighter.
He bolted like lightning. The 6-2 guard averaged 10 points and three assists in 34.7 minutes. He played 88 games, starting all but two.
And like that, the most heralded, talented, talked-about class of the Carmody era was down from five to two.
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In a bit of contrived fate, the class of 2006 – Maley, Tolic, Parker, Mohamed Hachad and Evan Seacat – spent their freshman years together in Allison Hall. They got to know each other and soon came to understand what outsiders thought and expected of them.
The previous year, in Carmody’s second season, NU had compiled a 16-13 overall record, 7-9 in the Big Ten – its best conference mark in 18 years. The Cats were snubbed by the NIT, but fans didn’t fret for long. The whispers from the grapevine portended a recruiting class that was nothing short of awesome, capable of ushering in a new era of NU basketball-
Maley might have been the most popular of the quintuplet, since he hailed from the western Chicago suburb of Western Springs. He was a shooter with size, just the right fit for Carmody’s style of offense.
Parker had name recognition because of his brother, who was the starting point guard for the San Antonio Spurs. Fans were intrigued that NU could land a player who was capable of bringing an entourage.
Seacat was known as the “best shooter in southern Indiana,” a title that once belonged to Larry Bird.
Hachad, people discovered, had been recruited by Kansas, and what was good enough for Roy Williams was certainly good enough for them.
Tolic, following in the footsteps of fellow Croatians Vedran Vukusic and Davor Duvancic, had potential. People were eager to see what he could bring.
Expectations? Yeah, there were a few.
The five of them made a pact to take NU to its first ever NCAA Tournament. It was a lofty goal, a bold promise between five freshmen who had no clue how hard the journey would be, or how soon their paths would diverge.
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Senior Night comes to Welsh-Ryan Arena on Saturday. The honorees will be Vedran Vukusic, Mohamed Hachad, Evan Seacat, Mike Jenkins, Justin Hoeveler, Tolic and manager Matt Cohen.
Jenkins will leave as NU’s winningest player ever. Vukusic is on pace to finish his career as NU’s third highest scorer of all time. Hachad will likely finish third on NU’s all-time steals list. Seacat, in the past few weeks, has triggered about as many standing ovations as he had in three years prior.
It’s a nice class, sure. But it isn’t quite the class.
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Most of them will go on to successful careers. Excepting Parker, they are all set to graduate this spring, and after that life awaits.
Maley is finishing a degree in sociology at Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and will return to Chicago this summer to work as a trader. He has retained a cursory interest in NU basketball. As the Cats whipped Wisconsin on ESPN2 last Thursday, Maley – who has dropped the second syllable in his first name and goes only by Jim – watched quietly with his friends.
“I’m more about the team here,” he said.
Tolic, who will take four classes this spring to finish his international studies and communications studies double major (he’ll also have a minor in Slavic language), wants to enter the workforce for a couple of years before possibly attending graduate school.
After his fourth surgery forced him out of basketball, Tolic spent a couple of months mad at the world – “Pounding my head against the wall,” as he puts it. But after meeting with the coaches, Carmody in particular, he let himself move on.
By the way Tolic speaks (eloquently) and acts (maturely), one gets the feeling his calling was never in basketball anyway. He worked in the ticket office last fall – occasionally getting recognized – and now spends his free time coaching fourth and sixth graders in Evanston.
“You just have to find the good stuff,” Tolic said. “I could have shoved myself into a room this year, not gone to class, not cared about my grades, just sit in my room and whine how I could have played, could have been out there with the guys. But I’m not going to do that. You just have to look on the positive side.”
Seacat has one more class to go before completing his communication studies degree. He’s undecided about his post-graduation plans, but he’s in the process of interviewing for jobs as a sales rep. Out of everyone, he’s kept his glass the most full – maybe because he knows how close he was to leaving the program as a freshman. (“I’m surprised he’s still there,” said Maley, who was Seacat’s roommate in Allison.)
“We still have this year, and we’re still hoping to make the Tournament,” Seacat said.
Hachad has three classes this spring before he’ll be done with his economics degree. He said he may try to play pro ball overseas.
Assuming NU doesn’t win the Big Ten tournament and make the Big Dance, Hachad said: “It’ll be something missing, I mean, definitely. But – I always feel that when you put the work into it, and you know deep inside that you worked hard, and you’ve done everything you can do and it just didn’t happen, then you don’t feel as bad.”
Parker, currently on the roster of Paris Basket Racing (a team in the top league in France), will probably keep chugging along. Maybe in a couple of years he’ll catch the eye of an NBA scout.
The five still talk once in a while, and Maley, Tolic and Parker have kept in touch, to varying degrees, with members of the NU basketball community. But they’ll all move on, if they haven’t already. This is the cycle of collegiate athletics – players come and go, leaving fans to make either legends or ghosts of them.
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The class of 2006, aggravatingly, has left behind a legacy of “What if’s.” What if Parker was playing the point, driving past defenders left and right, then wrecking havoc on defense with Hachad on the perimeter? What if Tolic was playing the pivot in the high post, with Maley spotting up from every spot imaginable, and Seacat doing his thing?
No one knows, and at this point it may be best to not speculate.
“Those guys have done what they can do, they’re not going to have any regrets, I know that,” Carmody said.
It’ll be left to another
class to try to accomplish what NU never has, that Sisyphean task that’s not getting any easier.
“Keep working, keep working,” Carmody said about his strategy to take NU to the next level.
For the fans, that translates to, Keep hoping, keep hoping. The law of averages can be our mantra, and luck should be just around the corner, and – isn’t that Jeremy Nash kid pretty good?
Sports editor Anthony Tao is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
