What was Northwestern good at last season?

Somehow, that’s a fair question to ask after the Wildcats won 20 regular-season games for the first time in program history. NU wasn’t a defensive-minded team, ending up outside the top 100 in the country in points surrendered per 100 possessions, but it wasn’t a world-beating offensive team either, finishing 68th in points scored per 100 possessions, with both rankings inflated by one of the country’s worst nonconference schedules. The Cats took a lot of 3s — almost 42 percent of their field goal attempts were from behind the arc — but hit about 36 percent of them, a middle-of-the-pack clip. NU played at one of the slowest paces in the country, but didn’t have the gritty personnel nor the hard-nosed mentality of other teams that look to keep things slow and grind out wins.

Beyond the numbers, there wasn’t one stylistic trait that really stood out for the Cats last season. On the offensive end, they had pace-and-space players that rarely played with pace and didn’t shoot well enough to space. On defense, NU’s coaching staff concocted a matchup zone scheme where lack of identity was seen as a feature rather than a bug.

That’s how the 2015-2016 Cats were one of the most predictable teams in the country, in terms of results. NU won games when it was supposed to and lost otherwise, never establishing a consistent identity that could pose a matchup problem to an ostensibly better team.

A lot can change over the course of an offseason. Many of the Cats’ rotation players last year were younger guys with room to add to their games. Sophomore forward Vic Law, expected to be one of the team’s best players last season before a season-ending shoulder injury, is back in the fold and figures to be a fit for any style.

The onus is on coach Chris Collins to figure out what kind of team NU should be this season and commit to it. If the Cats are going to be slow and physical, they should play big lineups, attack the glass and live at the free throw line offensively. If they’re going to rely on 3s, they should play small, spread the floor with shooters and ball-handlers and get out in transition more. If they’re going to lean on their defense, the coaches should find a scheme that works and play the players who execute it. Whatever happens, NU needs a style it can stick with, something that might catch a few top teams off-guard over the course of the season.

Talent trumps everything in basketball, of course. Identity matters less if Law is the do-everything star some hope he can be, junior Bryant McIntosh becomes an All-Big Ten-type guard, and sophomore center Dererk Pardon approaches the impossible standards set in his first conference game, a 28-point, 12-rebound showing at Nebraska.

The Cats relied on their talent without an identity last season, though, and were left sitting at home in March. They shouldn’t make the same mistake again this year.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @maxschuman28