Their NIL group has over 4,000 members, so there’s bound to be some bad apples:

No. 2 Purdue is on the horizon and Northwestern basketball hosted media availability. Here are our takeaways from remarks from Chris Collins, Ryan Langborg and Boo Buie.

No. 2 Purdue is on the horizon and Northwestern basketball hosted media availability. Here are our takeaways from remarks from Chris Collins, Ryan Langborg and Boo Buie.

Looks like Coach Braun has dipped back into North Dakota to hire Ean Deno as his Director of Scouting. Deno had been at North Dakota since 2019. He was most recently the Director of Football Recruiting and Player Personnel under Matt Entz.


Nice to see Braun building a strong personnel/recruiting department.

I traded texts with 2024 PWO target Landon Lauter tonight. He visited NU today.

He’s choosing between PWO offers from NU and Illinois and said that he will make his decision in the next few days.

The interesting thing is that NU is recruiting him as a defensive lineman, while Illinois wants him as an OL. He said he doesn’t have a preference.

“Wherever I can help the team the quickest,” is how he put it.

Lauter is a teammate of 2024 signee TE Patrick Schaller at Glenbrook North. He has scholarship offers from Army, Butler, Bucknell and Dayton, and a bunch of PWO offers, ranging from the MAC to the Big Ten.

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There are 80 power conference D-I men’s college basketball teams.

Since the start of last year (2022), only 13 have a winning record against ranked opponents.

Of those 13, two are in the Big Ten:

• Purdue, 8-1 (.889)
• Northwestern, 5-4 (.556)

Looking ahead to Wednesday night's game against those aggrieved Boilers. Some items of interest:

Home vs Road splits - a few things jump out immediately:
Purdue is shooting 47.2% from 3 at home vs 35.3% on the road in conference play:
Braden Smith - 4/9 44.4% at home, 8/26 30.8% on the road
Lance Jones - 13/28 46.4% at home, 13/47 27.6% on the road
Fletcher Loyer - 6/11 54.5% at home, 14/29 48.3% on the road
Mason Gillis - 7/12 58.3% at home, 9/19 47.4% on the road

Rebounding - They rebound 43.3% of their missed shots at home against 35.6% on the road.

Shooting defense - Teams shoot 34% from 3 and 43% from 2 against them at home, vs 37.7% and 44.8% respectively on the road.

Turnovers - they commit about 2.5 fewer turnovers per game at home

Edey - Averages only 8 FTAs per game at home, against 12 FTAs on the road. 20.2 points/game, 14.2 boards/game, 2.2 blocks/game, 2 turnovers/game at home vs 27 ppg, 12.8 boards/game, 2.5 blocks/game, 2.8 turnovers/game on the road.

Our Home/Road splits:
We shoot 45.5% from 3 and 54.5% from 2 at home vs 38.8% and 47.9% respectively on the road.
Our shooting defense has been woeful on the road, allowing teams to shoot 43.5% from 3 and 58.3% from 2 compared to 36% and 48% respectively at home. Interestingly teams only shoot 3s 30.8% of the time against us when we're on the road vs 36.1% when we're at home, so we're due for a bit of positive regression there? 🤷‍♂️
We turn the ball over twice as much on the road as at home, though that's a bit skewed by the PSU game - 11.2 to 5.4.

In Game 1, Purdue was not able to use Trey Kaufmann-Renn as much as they would like due to foul trouble, and so their starters only played 8 minutes together getting outscored 17-16, compared to 10.5mpg in their last 5 games. The remaining starters ended up playing better with Gillis in his place anyway, outscoring us 17-12 in 7:17, however when Smith/Loyer/Gillis/Edey played with someone other than Jones, they were outscored 30-22 in 9:52.
Jones fouled out late in the second half, forcing them to play freshman Camden Heide the remainder of the game and Smith/Loyer subsequently committed 5 turnovers on their 13 possessions (38%!) during the rest of the game compared to 12 in the previous 67 (18%).
We were 20-32 on free throws (Hunger/Preston were 3-10), though 12 of them were in OT and 8 were when Purdue was desperation fouling. I will almost certainly guarantee that we won't see 20 FTAs in regulation, though opponents have averaged 17 FTAs/game at Purdue. We also made 50% of our 3s in Game 1, which I doubt will happen again.
Purdue managed to get two more possessions than us in the game, which fortunately wasn't an issue.

So yeah, not expecting a victory here, but if we want to stay in this game, we need to avoid getting down big early. In each of their 4 conference home games, Purdue has opened up double-digit leads in the first 10 minutes - up 18 on Iowa, 16 on Illinois, 23 on PSU and 14 on Michigan. None of them took the lead at any point in the game after, though Illinois did cut it to 3 at one point. Hopefully we can keep it close, as the pressure will build on Purdue if that happens.

Kansas is also rebuilding their stadium. They will play nonconference games at Childrens Mercy Park in KC (Capacity 18,500) and conference games in Arrowhead Stadium. So I guess Seat Geek for the three September games wouldn't be a bad idea. Will be interesting to see what our final schedule looks like, Big 12 released theirs today.

I like the BBall program and I follow the games. But...it's all about Cats football to me. I have yet to go to WRA, but I went to every game at RF this year, and 4 games during the putrid 2022 season. I plan to go to all "home" games but OSU in 2024.

On TV, I rarely miss a FB game if not attending, whereas BBall I usually just follow on my phone and watch part of the 2nd half.

What say all of you? Asking on Bball board during Bball season just to see what your thoughts are.

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Most expected of all departures given he was named in specific offseason allegations.

Long period of success alongside Fitz.

Can’t say enough good things about our students. This video is amazing.

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Northwestern's latest Class of 2024 commitment comes from Dennis Rahouski from Eden Prairie, Minn. New NU OC Zach Lujan recruited Rahouski hard to South Dakota State, but Yale's academics won out. Once Lujan added academics, and Big Ten football, to his recruiting arsenal, he came back and offered Rahouski again, this time with success.

They still have a tough time handling pressure. Edey is a force but...

Rivals' Adam Gorney shares his thoughts and his grade on Northwestern's hire of David Braun.

@lou v has the story on the Belmont, Mass. DL's visit to Northwestern and the future of his recruitment.

Anyone who watched Silicon Valley will get the reference. It seems they have a lot in common, in terms of having zero awareness, doing no work, having all the wrong ideas, and yet constantly stumbling into wild success. If you don't know the show, look up a few bighead complilations on YouTube. Builds on this hypothesis are welcome. Might be nickname potential there...

Between NIL/mega-free agency and the 12-team playoff, which, any way you slice it will erode the bowl system (and almost definitely the conference championships, where both teams involved will surely bench their starters if a playoff berth is locked down), is college football in danger?

I can say for myself, as it starts to look more and more like the NFL (but honestly...worse), it's not like I'll adopt a new program to root for if the "top" 32-48-64 programs consolidate and box out the Northwesterns of the world.

If NU falls off the wagon and just has to play a 10-game regional schedule against Purdue, NIU, etc...that's actually just fine by me. And then maybe we alternate an annual January 1 exhibition game in Vegas vs. Stanford or Nashville vs. Duke?

Just interested in what people think the viability is of the status quo and what will come over the next 5-10 years. Honestly, the outlook is not so good to me.

Here's our mystery man, former Yale commit Dennis Rahouski.

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He would be safely out of Seattle before the B1G West rock fight on Sept. 21.

Honest question. I've never played football (other than pickup playground games/flag football). I have often felt that Head Coaches have always been unfairly blamed for lack of success. I see teams with no talent pile up losing records and the coach then gets fired. It wasn't his fault the team didn't have any talent. I live outside Washington D.C. They fired their coach (and he might suck for all I know and deserve to be shown the door) but is it fair to blame him? I don't see any talent on either side of the ball... Unless he did the drafting, how is it his fault the team stinks? (I hate the Commanders so I'm not necessarily upset).

On the flip side of the coin, Northwestern didn't seem to have much talent in the cupboard coming of a 1-11 season and the hazing scandals. Yet Braun did lead this team to a bunch of wins, Bowl birth, and Bowl victory. Did the team have more talent than I was assuming they had? Or can a truly brilliant football coach have that type of an impact with middling talent??

I guess I'd be inconsistent if I said "it's not fair to blame the head coach when the team stinks" AND "Braun is the best coach ever for leading a talentless squad to victory" in the same breath.

From people who have played football in High School or College, thoughts on this???

So predictable

…that DE Caden O’Rourke will be a Wildcat.

Book it.

Seahawks have Mike Kafka under consideration for their vacant head coach position. He has made the second round of interviews.

Since Seahawks are Alaska's Pro Team, wishing him the best.