In several ways, Northwestern coach Joe McKeown’s final game of his four-decade coaching career embodied his storied 18-season tenure with the Wildcats.
The contest against Purdue had everything. Thrilling highs. Heartbreaking lows. Although the Wildcats (8-21, 2-16 Big Ten) fell 67-62 to the Boilermakers (13-16, 5-13 Big Ten), it was still a nail-biter that kept the Welsh-Ryan Arena crowd tense down to the final minute.
Senior guard Caroline Lau, a lineup fixture for the past four years, brought most of the highs. The ’Cats’ primary playmaker finished her final game at NU with a double-double and five 3-pointers that swung the momentum in the ’Cats’ favor.
One of the loudest cheers came late in the fourth quarter, when Lau assisted sophomore guard Kat Righeimer off a steal to narrow the Boilermakers’ lead to three.
But seconds after, the arena fell quiet as graduate student forward DaiJa Turner — whom the team had just celebrated before the game along with graduating players Lau, Grace Sullivan, Tate Lash, Sammy White and Lauren Trumpy — left the floor injured.
In the last minute of play, the Boilermakers pulled ahead as the McKeown chapter came to a close.
With 2025-26 marking McKeown’s fourth consecutive losing season, it can be easy to forget the highs of his career. Just six years ago, in 2020, he took the ’Cats to the program’s first regular-season Big Ten championship following 26 wins.
McKeown became NU’s sixth-ever head coach in 2008 following a season in which the ’Cats finished at the bottom of the Big Ten. He went on to become the longest-tenured and winningest head coach in program history.
But despite his numerical accomplishments, including 19 years coaching at George Washington before he came to NU, he valued more than the scoreline.
“I just want to be remembered as somebody that cared about his players, did everything we could to make them better,” he said. “Everything we could.”
Those lessons resonate for Lau, who became the team’s captain at the start of her sophomore year and has had the increasingly rare experience of playing for the same coach and team for all four years of college.
“We always say that we try to be good people before good players,” she said.
On the other hand, Sullivan came to NU in 2024 after two years at Bucknell University. But the senior forward and fourth-leading scorer in the Big Ten said she “didn’t even feel like a transfer” thanks to the program’s environment.
Playing under McKeown, Sullivan said she’s learned to push through adversity, whether it was trailing during a game or enduring the season’s compounding losses.
“That’s what this team did so well this year,” she said. “We never broke. We always had that good chemistry, had the fight.”
With 14 seconds left in the game, Purdue led by seven points. McKeown called a full timeout. He didn’t say much. He said he just told players to “hit a three, get a stop and hit another three.”
The road ahead for the ’Cats remains uncertain as NU has yet to announce McKeown’s successor. But in the midst of it all, McKeown said he wants players to know the imperfect journey, much like his own, with its ups and downs, makes them stronger.
“It’s going to be a lifetime win,” he said.
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