Men’s Basketball

Six Northwestern players will be honored during the Wildcats’ (13-17, 4-15 Big Ten) Senior Day festivities Saturday. They’ll form arguably the most unique senior class of players in the country, as all six are completely different basketball players from one another.

Those collective differences make it so hard to evaluate the class’ legacy heading into the 2018-19 regular season finale versus Purdue, (22-8, 15-4) a program looking to claim its second Big Ten regular season title in two seasons.

Forward Vic Law and center Dererk Pardon are the faces of the class, and have their legacies in purple secured. For Law, it’s as a starter on the 2017 NCAA Tournament team, and as one of the most talented players to ever suit up in purple and white threads.

For Pardon, every conversation about him will start with his game-winning basket against Michigan two years ago that all but guaranteed the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid. But through his play over this past year, he will also be remembered for his energy and his top-notch efficiency on the offensive end.

After that, it gets more difficult to judge.

Guard Jordan Ash is a captain along with Law and Pardon, but he has not played this calendar year after blowing out his knee. After playing behind Bryant McIntosh for three years, this season was Ash’s chance to rise out of the shadows. But injuries derailed that opportunity.

After leading the Missouri Valley Conference in scoring last campaign, guard Ryan Taylor came to Evanston with large expectations as a high-profile grad transfer. Those expectations loomed large throughout the season, as everyone waited for Taylor to show the shooting prowess that propelled him to first team All-MVC. Every once in a while, the 6-foot-6 guard illustrated that innate ability.

But as conference play went on, it became clearer and clearer that Taylor was not coming. Over the past 12 games, he scored in double-digits only twice. Over the past eight games, his minutes have steadily dwindled from 33 against Iowa to 10 against Ohio State.

While recognized on the roster as juniors, both forwards Aaron Falzon and Charlie Hall are seniors academically, entering school with Pardon and Ash in the class of 2019.

Despite being a walk-on with only one career point, Hall is a fan favorite. The son of two Emmy-nominated parents, his personality won the heart of the media during the tournament run, when he did segments for CBS and continued to represent the program well across social media and during in-game entertainment.

Of all these players, the legacy of Falzon is probably hardest to pin down. Even with another year of eligibility remaining, he is going to be walking with the seniors, as first reported by InsideNU. That same report said his walking is “not an indication of his future at Northwestern,” but it does raise questions as to whether this is the end of his career in Evanston.

Falzon burst onto the scene as a freshman, starting 29 games and finishing as the fourth-leading scorer on the team. But a knee surgery only a few games into the 2016-17 season ended his chance to leave him own personal mark on that 2017 tournament team.

And injuries have continued to plague him since. He never looked fully healthy last season as he dealt with a hip injury and this year an ankle injury kept him out early in the year. He had an amazing performance against Indiana in January, scoring 21 points while going 6-for-7 from beyond the arc, giving hope that Falzon was ready to return to prominence. He has not scored over 6 points since.

As a whole, it’s tough to say what the overall legacy of this group will be down the line. The recurring thread between most of them is injuries. Hall, Law and Falzon all redshirted a year due to injuries and dealt with injury issues in other seasons as well. Ash has been shut down the past two seasons due to injuries and even Pardon missed time his sophomore year due to an injury.

This is also a group that failed to reach the goal of returning to the tournament after 2017. But part of why it hurts so much that they won’t get back there is because they got there in the first place. Even though March 2017 feels like a decade ago, the five players walking Saturday on that team had as much to do with the tournament run as any other senior class group on that team. They all should get plenty of love and respect for the program-defining achievement two years ago.

With at least two more games left in their careers wearing Northwestern or Wildcats across their chest, there still is time to sharpen their legacies.

There is also time to make them much more murky.

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Twitter: @thepeterwarren