Eamonn Brennan used to write this column for the Athletic, but then left and now has his own Substack. Today was the first day of this year's bubble watch:
The last sentence, though...less humorous. We are 2-4 at PSU and 4-4 at Wisconsin under CCC, and we haven't won at PSU since 2017.
Northwestern (11-3, 2-1; NET: 71, SOS: 81): Now here’s a weird team sheet. The Wildcats are the only team to beat Purdue. They also lost to Chicago State. They are coming off an 88-74 throttling of Michigan State, a brilliant performance preceded by a 96-66 loss at Illinois. This is all highly bubbly behavior. The good news for Northwestern fans not sure what to make of this team is that the Wildcats are almost certainly not as bad as their NET, and in fact rank 29th in the country in the Shot Quality rankings, which at least indicates that Northwestern is getting good looks (and generally preventing them) at a level beyond their wild swings in results. A couple of difficult games for different reasons await this week: at Penn State, at Wisconsin. Watch Northwestern lose the first and win the second.
I like the note about our Shot Quality (from here), which in theory speaks to strong fundamentals, though apparently we're 286th in % of possessions that result in either a 3-point shot or shot at the rim, and therefore the model predicts some negative regression moving forward. This is the first time I've heard of this website, so I can't speak much to its results, just passing on the data points.The last sentence, though...less humorous. We are 2-4 at PSU and 4-4 at Wisconsin under CCC, and we haven't won at PSU since 2017.
