Updated 3/12 4:38 p.m. INDIANAPOLIS – Coach Bill Carmody stood in Northwestern’s nearly empty locker room and talked about the future.

NU had fallen to Minnesota in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament, and he already had answered the obligatory questions about his team’s on-court performance. Now the future was the only remaining topic of conversation.

Of course, that always has been the case with NU basketball, since the present rarely has offered much hope. This season, the Cats made a run at the NCAA Tournament – or at least as much of a run as they have made in Carmody’s nine-year tenure. A loss to Ohio State in the season finale slimmed the team’s chances, and the 66-53 loss to Minnesota on Thursday shaved them down to zero.

Nonetheless, Carmody still had two futures to chat about.

In the immediate future, his team still has an excellent chance to earn a spot in the NIT. At some schools, an NIT berth earns you a pink slip; at NU, it qualifies at a rare accomplishment. Carmody believes it’s one his team deserves.

“This is a team that, we had a lot of good wins and very few bad losses,” he said. “Everyone is talking about how we should have won this game or this game, but we didn’t, but still I think it’s a pretty solid score.”

Talk then turned to the more long-term future. Asked what an NIT berth would say about a program that has not tasted the postseason in this decade, Carmody expressed his belief that the program is building toward something positive.

“It’s a solid team, and we lose one guy who was a big part of that, Craig (Moore), and you have all the young guys,” he said. “So how are the young guys going to come along? Is (Michael) Thompson going to get better? (John) Shurna, Luka (Mirkovic), Kyle (Rowley), are they going to get better? They’re all hard workers.”

Carmody went on to talk about the program’s improved recruiting efforts, which last year netted Shurna, Mirkovic and Rowley, who all have contributed this season. NU locked up two more highly regarded prospects this year, in smooth lefty shooter Alex Marcotullio and all-around threat Drew Crawford.

Carmody takes these signings as evidence that NU has cleared a hurdle in its recruiting efforts, saying the team is getting kids it “didn’t get in the door with before.” He realizes the Cats have been hampered by the lack of a winning tradition, as well as the school’s high academic standards.

The academic standards will not, and should not, change. But new traditions can start at any time, and maybe Carmody finally is moving in the direction of fostering a successful one after spinning his wheels for much of his time in Evanston.

Assistant sports editor Andrew Simon is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].