By Abe RakovThe Daily Northwestern
Well, that game was awful.
Northwestern’s sloppy loss to Illinois on Wednesday night was u-g-l-y, but yes, it did have an alibi – there wasn’t much talent between the teams.
NU coach Bill Carmody has overcome inferior talent since he’s been at NU (which is, in part, his fault). He’s proven to be a top-25 coach in the country every year while coaching top-100 talent. At least now the Cats seem to be reeling in decent players, with freshmen Kevin Coble, Jeff Ryan and Jeremy Nash showing they’re the future of NU. With a better-than-normal class coming in next year, Carmody seems to have found his recruiting niche.
Then there’s Illinois coach Bruce Weber, who couldn’t recruit a fly to Champaign.
And keeping flies out of Champaign is difficult, as former Illini star Dee Brown told The Daily two years ago.
“We got flies. Like all year round. That shouldn’t be possible. When it gets cold, they should leave. They stay, as I’ve noticed. That’s not even possible. Flies are not even supposed to live in those conditions. Flies’ life expectancy is 48 hours. They live for years in Champaign. There’s some that are so old that they can’t even fly no more. They just sit in one spot all day, ” Brown said.
Weber took Illinois to the national championship game two years ago, but that was with now-Kansas coach Bill Self’s players. Now that Weber has more of his own players, Illinois has become a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team.
Weber’s first four classes at Illinois have included three four-star recruits out of five stars (he may sign another this season), according to Rivals.com. Self, on the other hand, inked three four stars and a five-star product (none other than Dee ‘For Three’ Brown) in his final two seasons with the Illini.
Yes, it’s hard to recruit to fly-ridden Champaign, but it’s been done before.
Illinois looks decent on paper talent wise, and after Wednesday’s “victory” got up to 18 wins – but only four of those came against quality teams. NU doesn’t need to think about quality wins to impress the NIT committee anymore, as it fell below .500 and has shown no signs it can get back above that mark.
The best thing the Cats can do the rest of the season is give Coble, Ryan and Nash 30 minutes a game together – then at least the future has a chance to be better than the present.
Basketball editor Abe Rakov is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
