WSJ Article - focus on Collins building progra.
- Thread starter JoeWildcat
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Good article.
I take issue with: "...if Collins could handle building a program from scratch".
It's inaccurate and a bit unfair to characterize CC's taking over the NU HC job as building "from scratch". Gary Barnett was definitely (or very nearly) building the NU FB program "from scratch". However, taking a program that was winning 40+% of its B1G games and reaching the NIT with a degree of consistency, while getting into the NCAA-T conversation occasionally cannot be fairly described as "building a program from scratch".
I found that information interesting. Has the list of those interviewed ever been released by a more or less reputable media outlet?
I suppose one can always find Internet rumors, of dubious accuracy.
The reality is that he built it largely from scratch. The contributions of Taphorn and Sanjay notwithstanding. They are important players to the team, but the core of the team is and all of the attitude, philosophy, and the body of work is Collins. Tap and Sanjay may have been recruited by Carmody. But, they were coached and developed by Collins. They are his more than they are Bill Carmody's. Thank Carmody for his contributions to the program if you must. But, let's not pretend that he had anything to do with this and if he hadn't spent 13 years here that there is no way that Collins would have been unable to do what he did here, especially when many of the same people who are saying this also said NU was doomed to never go to the dance and were highly skeptical that Collins could turn it around. At worst, you discredit the job that CCC has done and are completely misplacing the credit. At best, you're projecting something that is unknown. Could Collins have taken the program at any other stage of it's existence and turned it around like he has. The truth is, nobody knows. But, I believe he could have. Just as another assistant from a national championship program came in and completely changed everything for us in Football. Sometimes it just takes belief and understanding of what it takes to be a champion. Whatever you may believe, let's consider that what we do know is that Collins was given a program that he had to completely remake in his image. That's basically building from scratch. No matter how high the program was already built when CCC came in, he knocked everything down (including that silly gimmick offense and the idea that rebounding and defense don't matter, as well as a completely different approach to recruiting). As far as I'm concerned, he did build from scratch because he had to junk what was in place when he arrived.
Your definition of "building from scratch" seems to apply to just about EVERY NEW coach who takes over ANY program in ANY sport. Most new coaches install a new O and D after taking over the program (even a highly successful one). That is NOT what I (and I reckon, most) understand by the phrase "building from scratch". That's just an X-and-O change. It may even be done without a coaching change (for example when RW installed the spread O at NU FB).
To me, "building a program from scratch" means building a program when either (1) there is none (say, a new sport is being introduced at a college), or (2) figuratively there is none (meaning that what there is is so unsuccessful and non-competitive that it is almost as if no program existed). Clearly NU did have had a BkB program that had been operating at a major conference for decades (not case (1)). If you think the state of the NU BkB program when CC took over fell in case (2) then there is no point in arguing with you. NU VERY CLEARLY had a COMPETITIVE B1G BkB program, which typically won 40%+ of its B1G games. Basically they often fell just a game or 2 under .500 in league play. Enough to be competitive, but generally not enough to reach the NCAA-T.
That is not to say that NU should have contented itself with winning just under half its B1G games. Ultimately NU should aim to win its league (as it did in the distant past in BkB and more recently in other sports) and ultimately the entire division (meaning the NC). Reasonable people can make the case that under BC that wasn't going to happen, and that he should have been replaced for that reason. Fine. But that does NOT mean that the new coach would be "building from scratch". He would just be taking a COMPETITIVE B1G BkB program to a higher level (which is NOT the same as "building from scratch", even if he changed the basic O and D strategy).
Finally, while no one will complain after a 10-win B1G regular season, which most analysts expect will lead to the cats first NCAA-T appearance (we will know for sure in about a week), it is YET to be determined whether CC will be able to sustain his 4th-season level of success and (most importantly) keep on exceeding it until NU is able to win B1G crowns and more. We can HOPE he will. But we do NOT YET KNOW if he will or won't. A single season of moderately exceeding previous accomplishments isn't enough to tell us.
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Oh, c'mon now.
Without BC elevating the program to the level he did, CC likely wouldn't be here.
Did CC build the core of this team w/ his recruits? Yes.
But CC's job of recruiting was made easier by the fact that the program had some degree of success and recruits could see that it was indeed possible to win at NU and that the NCAAs was within reach.
I doubt that Law, and he was the lynch pin to CC's recruiting, would have come if NU had been winless in the B1G for multiple years.
I'm fine with giving BC credit for building a program that could sometimes compete. But, nobody can deny that Collins deserves MOST of the credit for completely recreating the squad into a team that made the NCAAs. I recall a lot of "There's no way we will ever be able to play man defense." and "We'll never be able to run the floor or play normal basketball because our athletic talent will always be worse."
The program competed as early as BC's SECOND season, when NU's ended just one game under .500 in the B1G. Yes there were also bad seasons early on. But how could there not be given the state BC found and history the previous decades?
NOBODY has made the NCAA T this season (with the possible exception of the champ of a tournament-less conference, if any). First, conference tournaments need to be played, to know who is an AQ. Then the T-committee meets, a week from today. We will then know.
It would be great if CC can not only sustain but exceed this level of success, so that NU not only simply makes the T (if it in fact does next week), but goes on to win conference championships, reach the S16, the F4, and eventually become NC. It would be great if it indeed happens. Only time will tell.
He also won a total 3 conference games in seasons 7 and 8. Not exactly sustained success.
Look, this has all been covered in the past, Felis. No sense in rehashing it. All I'm saying is Collins deserves most of the credit for where the team currently is right now, as it was him that completely rebuilt the team (sort of akin to taking over Navy football and winning running a standard offense instead of a gimmick offense run by nobody else).
CC did what the vast majority of coaches do when they take over a program: install his own O and D schemes. It would have been quite strange had he not done it, right?
In CC first 2 seasons, and to a lesser extend his third, the program actually fell slightly behind its typical BC level (7-8 reg season B1G wins plus NIT), when it only won 6(2) and 8 with no postseason. Now in his 4th he has won 10 (possibly 11) and (probably) will earn the elusive NCAA invite. No complaint from me. But let's not make it sound like a Barnett-type turn-around. It has been an incremental improvement after 4 seasons from a game or 2 under .500 to a game or 2 over .500. Welcomed and appreciated improvement. But a marginal improvement nonetheless.
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You can believe that if you wish. Frankly, I think he had to rip out everything that Carmody did. Whatever Carmody had built at NU, regardless of what either of us think of it (we obviously have very different ideas of what exactly he built here), CCC threw it out and built from the ground up. Less Taphorn and Sanjay. There is nothing that Carmody had at NU that Collins retained. Not that gimmicky offense, not the disdain for rebounding and defense, not the aversion to recruiting.
Crawford was a great player for us. And he did help hold the team together and avoid us from really starting at a stage where no one could say we weren't starting from absolutely nothing.
FWIW, Byrdsong inherited a veteran squad that made the NIT his first year. KON inherited Evan Eschmeyer and Geno Carlisle. CCC inherited a hell of a lot less. So, let's not pretend that CCC was gifted a full cupboard.
FWIW, CCC is the first NU coach to have a winning career record at NU since Arthur Lonburg who started coaching us in 1927 and also won our last and only B1G championships in 1931 and 1932.
Um, no. BC's overall conference record was a percentage of .318. That equates to under 6 conference wins (5.7 to be precise) per season. But don't let facts get in your way.
Barnett took a job where there was nothing to build on, no tools in the shed, nobody with a clue to help and a great big sign over the entrance that said "Hazardous Waste Zone ... Enter at Your Own Peril." Collins took a job with a great AD, a very supportive President and Board of Trustees ... and a few pieces to work with in Olah, Crawford and Demps. Is it fair to say CCC started from scratch? I think so. It's just that he had some ingredients with which to build something from scratch.
What Carmody did for the program was appreciated by NU fans, but it was meaningless to recruits. No dance experience, no championships and no NBAers defined the program as bottom of the barrel awful....forever. Which frankly was true. Maybe we were at best the best of the worse on occasion. But again. that's the perception of the program CCC inherited.
I can guarantee you guys like Law thought they were buying into a start from scratch proposition.
I still think what Barnett did was the single greatest coaching accomplishment in the near 50 years I have been following sport. What a shame we didn't have Jim and Morty around then to guide the ship better than Taylor did.
GOUNUII
Who spoke of average? I said "typical" AT THE TIME CC took over. Except for the very last (injury plagued) season BC won 7-8 reg season B1G games with an NIT appearance in his final 4 consecutive seasons. That represents the TYPICAL level of achievement of the NU PROGRAM as CC found it. That is his baseline.
Does "typical" and "baseline" mean the seasons that he wasn't 1-17 (1-17!!!!), 2-14, 3-13 (twice!), and 4-14? Asking for a friend.
I strongly disagree that it was "meaningless to recruits" that they would be joining a program that was already consistently COMPETITIVE in one of the nation's premier conferences (and winning 40%+ of your games, with ocasional upsets of top teams, should satisfy any reasonable definition of competitiveness). Compare that to the situation in which the NU program was as recently as the early 90's where "the norm" was a 2-win B1G season. It was a completely different situation.
As I said, CC took a program that was a game or 2 under .500 in the B1G, and THIS season is a game or two over .500. It's a marginal improvement. Nothing remotely comparable to what GB did.
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No, because those seasons don't affect CC. BC kept building the program to the point 7-8 B1G wins plus an NIT appearance was TYPICAL. It was at that point CC came, not years before.
Fascinating. How do the numbers on this compare to you pre- and post-Fitz numerology?
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