By Abe RakovThe Daily Northwestern
Just to warn you in advance, in a few paragraphs this column predicts Northwestern will make it to the NIT.
Yes, the Wildcats were blown out by mediocre Penn State last night, but losing to the Nittany Lions has become commonplace around here – NU has lost four in a row to the perennial Big Ten bottom dwellers.
NU went into Big Ten play with 10 wins for the first time ever. Even with last night’s 83-57 loss in State College, the Cats have won nine of their last 11 games and are in position to finish above .500 for the first time since the 2001-2002 season.
The Big Ten is very top heavy, as after Ohio State and Wisconsin there are a bevy of mediocre teams (and then there’s Minnesota, which is terrible and coachless). There’s a very good chance NU will lose its four games against Ohio State and Wisconsin and win its two against Minnesota, but the other nine are a crapshoot. And the Cats still have a non-conference matchup against Texas-Pan American.
Assume the Cats win four of those nine Big Ten contests in question, beat Texas-Pan American and lose in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament – that’s a 17-14 record, 6-10 in the Big Ten and a near certain NIT bid.
So how did NU go from a young team that was supposed to struggle mightily this season to one that could make an NIT run? Here’s a rundown of what the Cats did while we were on break:
Rocky Start
NU won two home games by a total of four points in its first winter break contests. The first was a two-point overtime victory against a 5-8 Mid-American Conference school in Western Michigan. Not an ideal win, but a win is a win, right? And it was still better than the Cats’ 41-39 debacle over Division III Wheaton in their next outing. Wheaton actually had a shot for the win, but a 3-pointer bounced off the rim. A win is a win, though, and NU had five in a row at this point.
Coming out party
The Cats fled Evanston for sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico for the San Juan Shootout. After falling to eventual tournament champion Tennessee Tech in the opening game by a point, NU responded with a win against the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez and a 34-point shellacking of Utah – the school’s worst loss in 18 years. But the story of the tournament for NU was freshman Kevin Coble, who was named to the all-tournament team after averaging 20.3 points a game on 58-percent shooting. The Phoenix native averages a team-high 13.5 points on the season.
Perfection for Scott
Senior Vince Scott, who has been the whipping boy for NU fans and the media for nearly his entire time in Evanston, was perfect for two games over the break. He went 12-12 from the floor in the win against Utah and the following game back in Evanston against Loyola (Md.). And it wasn’t like a 12-for-12 performance from Ohio State’s Greg Oden, where he just dunks 11 times and lays it up once, Scott actually has range and was 5-5 from 3 in the two games.
A 6-1 finish to the winter break schedule is all NU could have asked for going into the season. A 10-4 record is much more than the Cats could have hoped the first portion of the season would bring. So whispering about the NIT is OK at this point, but don’t get too excited yet. This is the same program that has finished just one game under .500 three seasons in a row.
And the last time the Cats finished .500 was the 2001-2002 season when they went 16-13 but were left out of the NIT. That’s unlikely to happen again, but it’s not a good bet to assume anything about NU basketball.
