Anyone else see a little Doyle in Langborg? Starts w the hair and the old man moves around the basketball. Doesn’t have quite the Barney Rubble stumble.

Check out our interview with Northwestern's inaugural member of its Class of 2025, Jonathan Stevens Jr.

Braun’s off-field reorganization also appears underway.

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The Cats missed their first three 3 pointers against Illinois and their last three against OSU. In between, they went 21-31, almost 68%, over a stretch of about 65 minutes.

I don’t know which makes me happier: the fact that NU was consistently able to get great looks from beyond the arc or the fact that they converted at a rate that comes close to a decent free throw percentage. In the last two games, the Cats’ effective FG percentage has been video gamelike.

Place looked electric on TV. Thought it might explode when Brooks buried that 3 on the four point play. Students just phenomenal. After the game on BTN, the analysts were talking about how W-R was, basically forever, a place where big opposing fan base could show up and always make it a neutral site atmosphere. No more. They said it’s a true home floor and it’s very hard to play in our building. This was always possible but it’s thrilling to see it come to fruition, and not just in a one-off season. Man, I hope we keep building this. It’s special.

Matt and I got a chance to chat with Coach Braun for a little while before the game tonight. He's here with his entire family, a bunch of coaches and some very large young men. They are sitting in section 208, if you're at the game.

But Braun was his usual friendly, easygoing self. He had his youngest daughter Blake in his arms as he talked to us, and his wife and other kids were standing behind him. He told us how much he appreciates what we do and how much it helps in recruiting. He's just a such a genuinely nice and gracious guy. He's awfully hard not to like.

It's going to be a good atmosphere tonight at Welsh-Ryan -- it's packed, and it's overwhelmingly Purple for a change. I don't know how much of an impact a basketball game will have on a football player's decision, but it can't hurt NU's chances.

Northwestern offered Darrin Strey, their fourth OL offer of the 2025 cycle so far, on Jan. 22. Here's our story on Strey, the offer and his thoughts on Northwestern so far.

Here are @mshelton33's takeaways from a complete beatdown at Welsh-Ryan.

Boo Buie gets most of the NU attention…. deservedly so, but Brooks has been quite possibly the best all-around player this year. His scoring is way up. Averaging 15/7/3 is an insane stat line.

I don’t read the professional prognostication sites or dive deep into the quad/strength of schedule stats. This is just my sense of how things look with 12 regular season B1G games remaining on the schedule. The Cats are 14-5/(5-3) thus far. Let’s consider three major scenarios, prior to the conference tournament…

Pessimistic:
4-2 at home
1-5 on the road
19-12/(10-10)
Verdict: BUBBLE, might need a win or two in the BTT to definitely get in

“Average:”
5-1 at home
2-4 on the road
21-10/(12-8)
Verdict: IN, 8/9 seed

Optimistic:
6-0 at home
2-4 on the road
(Or 5-1 and 3-3)
22-9/(13-7)
Verdict: IN, 6/7 seed

(Two other scenarios: A meltdown, losing 8+ remaining games, and falling off the bubble completely -OR- an epic finish with 14+ conference wins, landing a 5/6 seed)

How do we feel about this? Are these reasonable scenarios? Which is likeliest?

The beaten down NU fan in me can’t shake the meltdown or pessimistic options. My inner exuberant fan is rooting (not totally irrationally) for the optimistic or even epic options. But “average” seems about right. We honk one of the last 6 home games, but steal 1 or 2 on the road. The final B1G record that I’m not sure about is 11-9. I do think that gets us just off the bubble and in.

Take nothing for granted! Go ‘Cats!

This is a legit very good basketball team. Balanced scoring and Defense is what’s really impressive! Fun to watch.

Here are @mshelton33's takeaways from a complete beatdown at Welsh-Ryan.

Northwestern (14-5, 5-3 Big Ten) hosts Ohio State (13-6, 3-5 Big Ten) tonight at Welsh-Ryan Arena. The game is looking like a 7:36 tip off and will air on BTN.

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No long Twitter post as yet. I hope that means he’s ‘exploring options’ but also can return. He presumably does not have his degree yet, which hopefully increases the chances he stays.

Its pretty much a given that The Ball don't lie.
Everybody knows this.
So the question was "Should Terrence Shannon be playing in this game?"
And The Ball spoke its truth 5 times as it leapt from Shannon's hands into the cleaner hands of a Northwestern player.
I hope for Shannon's sake that The Ball wasn't ruling on his guilt in his upcoming felony trial. Because The Ball spoke decisively last night.

Here are the numbers...


Nobody played badly. Some guys just played really well. Without Berry or Buie or Nicholson or Barnhizer we would have certainly been beaten.
But Nicholson gets the game ball, statistically speaking.

A few things to point out... We played better defense when Nicholson was at the 5, allowing 58 points in 34 minutes (1.7 ppm). With Preston at the 5 we scored 2.5 ppm, but allowed 2.125 ppm.
With Martinelli at center (the small ball lineup) we got outscored 7-2 in 2 minutes in the middle of the 2nd half.
Thankfully we didn't see that lineup again until there was a minute left and we had an 8 point lead (and Nicholson fouled out).
That lineup makes a lot of sense when its free throw time, but not when you're outsized at all 5 positions!

Luke Hunger didn't play one second. Not sure what happened there.

Jordan Clayton played 3 minutes and we won those segments 7-3. He didn't put up any stats, but he breaks the string of negative results. That feels like progress.

Lineup-wise, the starters (Nicholson/Barnhizer/Berry/Langborg/Buie) played 23 minutes together and outscored their opponents 49-41.
This has been a recent and significant departure for Coach Collins. The starters are playing more minutes as a unit than anytime in the past several seasons.
23 minutes against Illinois (4 minutes of OT), 17 minutes against Nebraska, 18 minutes against Maryland. Before that? 11, 7, 8, 6, 9, 14, 11, 6, 5, 9, 14, 10, 8, 12.

Last year the starters played 20% of the minutes over the last 15 games. Thats 8 minutes per game.
The starters played the first 4 minutes of each half... and that was about it. Almost drove me insane.
The 2nd most-used specific lineup played 6 minutes per game (and Verhoeven was the center).
Our best lineup (Nicholson/Barnhizer/Berry/Audige/Buie) played a miserly 5 minutes a game.

In the disappointing 2021-22 season, over the last 15 games, the starters (Nance/Beran/Roper/Audige/Buie) played 20% of the minutes.
The 2nd most active lineup was Young/Beran/Roper/Audige/Buie who played a total of 22 minutes as a unit over 15 games.

In the last year of Miller Kopp, the starters played 8 minutes per game as a unit. The #2 lineup played 3 minutes per game.

This past offseason, I heard Chris Collins say "You want your 5 best players on the floor."
I had never heard him say that before, and it surprised me, but I think it reflected a serious change of mindset.
I have argued ad nauseum "You want your best lineups on the floor."
It seems we've made a hard shift in that direction - and hopefully not because the bench is shorter.

Of course, it helps when guys don't get whistled for cheap fouls. The refs can have a major (detrimental) impact on things.
When they let the guys play, the competition is better, the games are just much, much better.
Last night's game showed how that works.

Congratulations to the NU players and coaches on a huge victory!

We can talk about how Collins is using Nicholson differently some other time.

The Bears have hired him as Defensive Coordinator. Eric coached up DL at NU from 2004-2007. Congrats to Eric for making it to the top of the defensive coaching ladder!

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DE might be the deepest position on the roster for next season. Saka, Hubard, Pate, Hagarty, Kilbane... Sheesh.

This one comes as a bit of a surprise. Tyus had carved out a niche as a short-yardage back in a crowded backfield, but it appears he’s looking for more than that. Best of luck to No. 27!

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Hopefully Kips kid joins the cats

WildcatReport has heard that Northwestern will be hosting a smaller, elite Junior Day for some of their top-priority prospects at this stage of the cycle this Saturday. We will share the list of visitors once it has been finalized later in the week.

Amazing stat!

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Here are @mshelton33's takeaways from another epic night at Welsh-Ryan.

Northwestern offered a PWO spot to GBN's Landon Lauter, who played on both sides of the ball for the Spartans. He is being recruited as a DL, but that could change once he hits campus should he pick NU.

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