LOL how sad are we that we are hanging our hats on Nicholson and more Nance/Young? If this is what we are discussing in the offseason, we're looking at another bottom of the cellar season upcoming. That's not gonna cut if folks
Gaines Gone
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Young and Nance were on the court together a mere 10 minutes a game over the second half of the season. When they played together, we outscored our opposition 215-199. When they didn't play together, we were outscored 691 - 585.
Making some broad assumptions, you double Nance and Young's time together, you get 430-398 when they are out there together and 390 - 461 when Collins uses anything else. A 69-62 typical loss becomes a 66-63 loss.
Thats just the most obvious change. There are (or were) many others. Unfortunately it is looking backward, when we had Miller Kopp and (to a lesser degree) Anthony Gaines. Kopp played so much it is difficult to project performance when he is not on the court for us. In fact, the 13 lineups most used by Collins this season involved Gaines or Kopp or both.
Ty Berry and Matt Nicholson will presumably step up. I have confidence in both. Berry's "+/-" was the 2nd best on the team (in the 2nd half) and net positive when he played with Nance, Buie or Audige.
It isn't hopeless. Coach needs to get better at using his players.
Making some broad assumptions, you double Nance and Young's time together, you get 430-398 when they are out there together and 390 - 461 when Collins uses anything else. A 69-62 typical loss becomes a 66-63 loss.
Thats just the most obvious change. There are (or were) many others. Unfortunately it is looking backward, when we had Miller Kopp and (to a lesser degree) Anthony Gaines. Kopp played so much it is difficult to project performance when he is not on the court for us. In fact, the 13 lineups most used by Collins this season involved Gaines or Kopp or both.
Ty Berry and Matt Nicholson will presumably step up. I have confidence in both. Berry's "+/-" was the 2nd best on the team (in the 2nd half) and net positive when he played with Nance, Buie or Audige.
It isn't hopeless. Coach needs to get better at using his players.
Don’t have a case. I don’t know Miller or have any inside information. It would be pure speculation on my part.
Let's take the worst three programs: Rutgers, Nebraska and Minnesota.
What are these "plenty" of advantages?
You are not being recruited to play D1 Basketball. So you and maybe no else on this board cares about the NBA or professional basketball ball, but I can guarantee you the recruits do.
our facilities are significantly better than what they had in your day. They are not the best around and pretty much all the good schools have comparable or better facilities.
Campus is the eye of the beholder. I am not sure any recruit decides based on the campus sitting on Lake Michigan. Chicago metro is an advantage over most of the schools.
IMO the value of the NU degree is incomprehensible from the place a lot of these kids come from. A college degree in itself is often a first generational thing in the family. Even if it isn’t, the fact that NU is academically superior just doesn’t move the recruits to jump on an offer. In fact, I think it can be somewhat intimidating to many. Look around the campus, does your fellow student body have similar interests to you? Even close or are they enrolling with a totally different background and outlook on life? Just don’t feel this is an advantage at all.
I can list a string of disadvantages, but it’s been done so many times before and then you get labeled as an excuse maker.
Agree with Styre on this. Academics have certainly been an obstacle at times, but I think it’s wishful thinking that loosening that up would have any real impact. We already bring in 4-star guys, opening up to any academic qualifier isn’t going to result in 5-stars lining up outside our front door. Our current coach put together one nice tournament team. But since then, as recruiting and facilities continue to improve, the team’s performance has gone south. And now 6 of 11 guys we brought in from 2016-19 have transferred (fixed this sentence because I had my numbers/timing wrong). Turning that into an academic standards argument seems to obscure the more apparent issue, which is that the teams we’ve fielded recently should have been better.
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👏👏👏 One of the better realistic statements.
I don't argue that there's problems with Collins' direction. But history tells you every guy who walks through the door needs a bare minimum of five years to establish the goal every one wants - consistency.
So let's stop the silliness of comparing this to other programs' coaching hires. Let's also stop pretending there's probably five guys out there who can do it AND will accept the job AND you won't need to overpay for. Hopefully there's one.
1) You see, it doesn't matter what you think. It matters what a top-100 kid who probably unrealistically thinks he can get to the NBA. So yes, the NBA opportunity matters.
2) Every school hands out college diplomas. You're going to tell me it not an "NU degree." Fine, i can go with that, but NU has had that "advantage" for decades. So obviously it's not an advantage.
3) I'm sorry, but I'm done considering the city as an advantage. EVERY coach says that at their opening news conference, and obviously it hasn't worked to their advantage.
You might want to consider that many of these items you list have been "advantages" for decades, and many schools obviously have selling points that are more important.
I actually do think loosening up academics could have an impact. I just don't think academics are the sole reason why we're constantly finishing in the basement.
Yeah, I might be understating that. I think my roundabout point is that we had good enough returning team in 17-18 to make the tournament again, and it fell apart, and then the next year fell apart a little more and now we're back to square one. Had that opportunity not been squandered maybe we'd be in a spot where loosening academics could attract difference makers because the program would have a profile. I'm just not sure it makes much of a difference if we open things up but all it gets us is access to a larger pool of guys who are about as good as who we're already bringing in.
It also matters what the kid's parents think. A lot, in some cases.
NU has many advantages. It has some disadvantages. Facilities were the number one problem. Our reputation of basketball failure was a problem. Academic standards were a barrier for the majority of kids, but a big plus for many other kids. If a guy has the grades to get into NU, we ought to be one of the top choices in the Big Ten, as long as he isn't thinking he's Dwayne Wade or Kevin Durant.
You can have good teams with guys like Shon Morris, Drew Crawford or Pete Nance, you just need more than 2 of them at the same time.
In the past, the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. We were lucky to get one good player a year. Now, the only excuses are that we can't consider recruiting 3/4 of the players (whatever that number is) because of academics and we have a reputation for losing basketball games.
In other words, Collins has the best opportunity of any coach in 40 years at NU.
Unlike what Pat Fitzgerald has managed to accomplish, it only takes 2-3 players a year to build a good basketball program.
And the transfer process should be a goldmine if we ever become relevant again.
Thats the optimistic story, anyhow.
PPD: "IMO the value of the NU degree is incomprehensible from the place a lot of these kids come from. A college degree in itself is often a first generational thing in the family. Even if it isn’t, the fact that NU is academically superior just doesn’t move the recruits to jump on an offer. In fact, I think it can be somewhat intimidating to many."
Bingo, bingo, bingo!
Bingo, bingo, bingo!
The 7 of 11 is not really correct. 2 of the last 9 and 3 of the last 10 have left. Nance, Beran, Buie, Greer, Young, Berry and Nicholson are still on the team. Jones left after one year. Kopp after 3 and Gaines after 4. What killed any momentum after the tournament group graduated was poor recruiting/development and a little bad luck. In consecutive years, our classes were (i) Falzon, Pardon, Ash, (ii) Benson, Brown and Rap, and (iii) Gaines. Falzon got hurt after his freshman year and was never the same player (and he wasn't explosive to begin with). Pardon obviously was a big reason we made the tournament. And Ash was a miss. I can live with that class but you are looking at only one starter or rotation guy in that group after Falzon got hurt. The Benson, Brown and Rap, class, followed by just Gaines, though, was a disaster and put the program on the path to the bottom of the conference. Can't end up with one defensive guy out of two recruiting classes. Maybe the big time programs can overcome it with transfers, but Northwestern can't. And none of our 4-stars developed into stars. If Collins really chose Kopp (an average B1G player at best) over Bey (an NBA starter), he should let someone else do the scouting. The reason the team has been bad is because of poor recruiting/evaluation.
Except Fitz says over and over that the academic prestige of an NU degree is a huge asset when recruiting. Are football and basketball players that different where it’s an asset for one group and a non-factor for another?
PurpleWB, I'm sorry but you need to get a little more realistic.
1) The parents' opinion as a primary selling point is dated. That was how Bob Knight closed deals in the 70s and 80s. By the 90s, he was getting out-recruited because the AAU scumbags already had influenced the parents by the time he arrived in living rooms.
Obviously, parents are important, but it's only a part of the recruiting influence.
2) You can't tell people the academics are an advantage for "many kids," then tell me 3/4 don't qualify (90% according to Kevin O'Neill, but I'll work with 25%). That's a strong disadvantage.
3) "If a guy has the grades to get into NU, we ought to be one of the top choices."
"One of the ..." ... well, now you just whittled down the 25%.
And if I want to go into engineering ... Illinois and Purdue are no jokes.
Business? Michigan is strong.
Journalism? Maybe Wisconsin?
But they all have that thing, NU doesn't have - proven recent basketball success.
4) "... only need 2-3 players ..." I can't tell you how often Bill Carmody used those same words. A Troy Murphy prototype was his Moby Dick.
Im not trying to make a Collins argument. There's incredibly few people here who don't think this is headed in the wrong direction. I hope he proves us horribly wrong.
But if you're going to pull out the pitchforks, you need to understand the reality of where NU has been and what it's true potential is. Generally, we're poking at the same table scraps from O'Neill to Carmody to Collins. Yes, there was a little more meat on the bone after Carmody. There might be if next year is Collins' last. But generally, it's been various levels of mediocrity.
1) The parents' opinion as a primary selling point is dated. That was how Bob Knight closed deals in the 70s and 80s. By the 90s, he was getting out-recruited because the AAU scumbags already had influenced the parents by the time he arrived in living rooms.
Obviously, parents are important, but it's only a part of the recruiting influence.
2) You can't tell people the academics are an advantage for "many kids," then tell me 3/4 don't qualify (90% according to Kevin O'Neill, but I'll work with 25%). That's a strong disadvantage.
3) "If a guy has the grades to get into NU, we ought to be one of the top choices."
"One of the ..." ... well, now you just whittled down the 25%.
And if I want to go into engineering ... Illinois and Purdue are no jokes.
Business? Michigan is strong.
Journalism? Maybe Wisconsin?
But they all have that thing, NU doesn't have - proven recent basketball success.
4) "... only need 2-3 players ..." I can't tell you how often Bill Carmody used those same words. A Troy Murphy prototype was his Moby Dick.
Im not trying to make a Collins argument. There's incredibly few people here who don't think this is headed in the wrong direction. I hope he proves us horribly wrong.
But if you're going to pull out the pitchforks, you need to understand the reality of where NU has been and what it's true potential is. Generally, we're poking at the same table scraps from O'Neill to Carmody to Collins. Yes, there was a little more meat on the bone after Carmody. There might be if next year is Collins' last. But generally, it's been various levels of mediocrity.
All of this is correct. And yet still, college ball is a game where the right coach can make all the difference and build a program from scratch. Gonzaga has never been to the NCAA tournament without Mark Few on their coaching staff. Baylor's program was on the verge of death not long ago due to a horrifying scandal. The NU job, with all of its issues, surely would have been more attractive to coaching candidates than Baylor in 2003.
Good coaches have overcome way steeper odds than NU currently faces to establish winning traditions. Call it bad luck, incompetence, or whatever you like but we have never found our Mark Few or Scott Drew and that's what we need. It's clear that Chris Collins isn't that guy.
It is probably a huge asset for some recruits and not for others. I think the pool of potential football recruits is larger than basketball so there may be more kids available who value the academics. In basketball, we are competing against a lot of schools that don't have football programs.
And don't forget that there are lots of pretty good schools (including smaller schools like us) that don't have football programs but compete against us in recruiting in basketball (Marquette, Butler, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Villanova, etc.). I know we are rated much higher but almost all schools can spin their academics and many of those schools can offer the urban/small school vibe at much more established programs.
Even with all the hurdles, though, I certainly think we can be better than we have been the past few years. We need to string solid recruiting classes together with the occasional really good ones and we should be able to get to the tournament every 4 to 5 years. The Nance, Young, Kopp and Greer class was very solid. Would have been even better with Lathon. Next year's class looks like it has the chance to be a very good one. But we need Beran to be a good player very soon or that class will end up just producing Buie. And the jury is out on Berry and Nicholson. Carmody was able to identify some really good players while also filling out much of the roster with guys who did not belong in the B1G. Collins needs to find a star or two every few years while filling out the rest of the roster with solid role players. Stick Shurna or Coble in place of Beran and we go to the tournament and the offense looks great in most games.
This is, IMO, true. I don’t think we can appreciate how the vast majority of these kids’ identities are tied into being a basketball player. How everything else pales in comparison.
My wife has a cousin whose wife told me she sometimes finds him in his car listening to tapes of the radio broadcasts of his high school games: “Chadwick for threeeeeee”. Dude never even played college at any level. He’s pushing 50.
But, regardless, we’ve brought in good raw material (kudos to CC for proving that’s possible). I think that’s where you and I truly disagree. I see talent that has been seriously mishandled. You see talent as a problem. It’s never going to be easy, we won’t magically turn into a landing spot for 5* kids. But we can attract decent talent.
I can't believe that we're able to fill our scholarship slots on the football team, which requires many more recruits, with athletes who value the NU degree, but we can't find a relative handful for the basketball team.
We are competing with a lot more teams for the pool of basketball players. And basketball is infinitely easier to project so not nearly as many lower rated kids end up being stars in basketball. The really good programs gobble up the really good players. Fitz isn't winning the recruiting rankings. For years, he recruited lower-rated players and developed them. There is just less development in basketball. Most of the really good players are identified by the time they are 16. Aaron Rodgers didn't have a Division I scholarship out of high school. There is a top 10 NFL pick at North Dakota State. That kind of stuff doesn't happen in basketball very often. Not excusing the performance of the team the past few years. We can certainly be better. Just explaining why football has been able to sustain success and basketball hasn't.
Agreed, and most of the time this century, we are not terrible. If we win 6 B1G games and finish around 500 overall, that's fine. Just don't suck
Don't dump Collins prematurely. It will only prolong success. We should have learned this lesson.
Not just that but football there are many more pieces to a team so having a bunch of solid players with no superstars provides a better team than it would in basketball where a true superstar can change the course of team even with glaring weaknesses from the rest of the players. Being 25% of the team playing offense and defense means 1-2 players can really be the difference. NU has the “depth” rn missing the star. Doesn’t even need to be NBA star. Just consistent leading scorer and ready for B1G ball.
Once again, I think we need to be more realistic for a starting point. Few and Drew are generational, top 10 (to be generous) coaches in the game right now. Few was on the short list for the NC gig.
Finding the NU Few/Drew would be a cataclysmic leap. Of course, that's what all of us want. However, even a middle-of-the-conference guy would be a large upgrade for NU.
Well a perennial middle of the conference team makes the tournament every year. That would be a cataclysmic leap in my book. And would probably take a Drew type coach to reach it. At minimum a Bob Huggins or John Belein level coach. Today’s Gonzaga wasn’t built in a day either. Anyone who has the chops to make NU a perennial tourney team probably has the chops to keep building into something special if we keep him.
Drew ... Few ... Huggins ... Bielein. Got it.
So we're saying we're looking for hall-of-fame caliber coaches, and that's what we should expect.
Just so I understand this direction, how long do we give the next guy until he demonstrates this hall-of-fame capability? I assume we're going to set that level at consistent mid-conference finishes.
Using the Gonzaga example, the coach who truly set the foundation for that program, Dan Fitzgerald, finished lower than 2nd in 6 of his first 8 seasons. And that was in the WCC, not the B10.
To be reasonable to the dump-everybody argument, Fitzgerald, only had one 3 or 4 conference-win season in that span. That's a little more acceptable than what we've seen. But, once again, there's a pretty big difference between the WCC and the modern day B10.
So we're saying we're looking for hall-of-fame caliber coaches, and that's what we should expect.
Just so I understand this direction, how long do we give the next guy until he demonstrates this hall-of-fame capability? I assume we're going to set that level at consistent mid-conference finishes.
Using the Gonzaga example, the coach who truly set the foundation for that program, Dan Fitzgerald, finished lower than 2nd in 6 of his first 8 seasons. And that was in the WCC, not the B10.
To be reasonable to the dump-everybody argument, Fitzgerald, only had one 3 or 4 conference-win season in that span. That's a little more acceptable than what we've seen. But, once again, there's a pretty big difference between the WCC and the modern day B10.
Why not? Isn't that, ultimately, what every programs dreams of?
In most cases coaches are not hired knowing that's what they'll become. With few exceptions (Roy Williams or Pitino for example).
Coaches make a name for themselves. Calhoun (there's an NU connection, go ahead have at it) was not hired at UConn knowing he'd become a HOF coach. Coach K was not hired from Army knowing he'd go into the hall.
Why have this inferiority complex that we can't hire a guy who goes on to become a HOF coach?
PS-We've had an HOF coach
As a point of an additional reference, the following was Gonzaga's '92-'93 schedule - their second 2nd place finish in eight years under Fitzgerald.
My point is two fold:
1) I don't think we're comparing apples to oranges if you're looking at Gonzaga as a comp.
2) At some point in the process, what's left of this fan base is going to have to show incredible patience. Part of me doesn't totally disagree with you if you don't want to be patient with Collins. All of us see the weaknesses.
The other part of me has concerns about a fan base that doesn't give some level of blind-faith loyalty to the guy who actually got NU to the tournament.
@ San Jose State
@ Southern California
Texas-Arlington
Alcorn State
@ Idaho
Eastern Washington
Sam Houston State
Drexel
Idaho State
@ Eastern Washington
@ Pepperdine
@ Loyola Marymount
Santa Clara
San Diego
Portland
@ Portland
@ Saint Mary's (CA)
@ San Francisco
San Francisco
Saint Mary's (CA)
@ San Diego
@ Santa Clara
Loyola Marymount
Pepperdine
Portland
Santa Clara
My point is two fold:
1) I don't think we're comparing apples to oranges if you're looking at Gonzaga as a comp.
2) At some point in the process, what's left of this fan base is going to have to show incredible patience. Part of me doesn't totally disagree with you if you don't want to be patient with Collins. All of us see the weaknesses.
The other part of me has concerns about a fan base that doesn't give some level of blind-faith loyalty to the guy who actually got NU to the tournament.
@ San Jose State
@ Southern California
Texas-Arlington
Alcorn State
@ Idaho
Eastern Washington
Sam Houston State
Drexel
Idaho State
@ Eastern Washington
@ Pepperdine
@ Loyola Marymount
Santa Clara
San Diego
Portland
@ Portland
@ Saint Mary's (CA)
@ San Francisco
San Francisco
Saint Mary's (CA)
@ San Diego
@ Santa Clara
Loyola Marymount
Pepperdine
Portland
Santa Clara
Prematurely?? He is entering his 9th year and he has finished better than 10th place twice - a 9th place finish and a 5th place finish (tourney team). If NU finishes 10th or worse next year, is that enough for you?
And you know this how? Until recently, Vandy had been a solid program. Stanford has made some runs. Again, not asking for BIG championships, just trying to finish middle of the pack regularly and top half every now and again.
You nailed it. "Dream" is the right word.
It has nothing to do with an inferiority complex. It has to do with reality. How does everything come together to find that perfect coach. The other consideration is what you do to build your program until you get that perfect fit.
Everybody wants a HOF coach. There's absolutely no program in this country that doesn't want that. You can list 10-20 programs that have these coaches, but you're omitting the other 300+ programs who haven't found the one they're looking for.
UCLA has been searching for a HoFer to replace Wooden since 1975. They had one, Larry Brown, and he stayed for all of two seasons.
Indiana is in that process now.
Watch what happens to North Carolina.
And those are blue blood programs.
Should we start the Shaka Smart list? This would be the long list of coaches who were the next great things, and never went anywhere.
Lastly, every coach we've listed is working on a relatively level playing field in terms of grades.
So let's stop acting like you can find Tony Bennett (probably not a HoFer yet) in the third aisle of your grocery store. It's obviously not easy.
Uhhh, yes? I mean it’s clear by now that a HOF coach is what it takes to consistently succeed at NU. Other schools have gotten HOF coaches, there’s probably at least 10 of them coaching at any given time plus some more that will eventually reveal themselves to be that same quality that we don’t know of yet. Why shouldn’t the goal be to find one of our own? We did it in football. It’s not as impossible as you make it out to be.
Our patience should last as long as the coach shows some semblance of making consistent forward progress. Even if the wins aren’t consistent, it should be clear what he is building or trying to build. And it should be clear what his strengths are relative to the conference. Collins is in his 9th year and none of that is clear. That’s why it’s time for him to go. Beyond the losing, it’s obvious he has no direction for the program.
Give him through his contract, whenever that expires. Point being, I believe he's only part of a bigger problem.
This "mishandled talent" concept resonates with me. I was completely on board with Collins after the tournament team, but the next season exposed him. He got off to a good start with his first recruiting class and rode that (and two Carmody guys) as far as that would take him. Then it disintegrated when Lumpkin and Taphorn graduated.
Watching this season's games as we lost 13 straight, I kept asking "Why is he playing Beran?" "Why is he playing that same 5 guys so much?" "Why isn't Young playing more?" "Why won't he put Young and Nance together?" "Can you try Greer at the point with the two bigs?" "Why is Young running around 25 feet from the basket?" "Why won't you play Nicholson?" "Why do you have Young out there with 4 guards?" "Why are you subbing constantly?" and "Can you have McIntosh work with Buie?"
It wasn't until late in the season that I got the box scores that enabled me to look at how the various lineups performed. Some facts...
1) the lineup that Collins used the most performed way below the team's standard level.
2) Beran with Nance was very bad, but 70% of Beran's minutes were with Nance !!!
3) Young and Berry both improved the play of all their teammates, except with Gaines.
4) Young and Gaines played poorly together, but 60% of Young's minutes were with Gaines !!!
5) Young / Kopp / Beran / Audige/ Buie was strong, but played less than 2 minutes per game.
6) We outscored our Big Ten opponents when Young and Nance were paired up.
7) We outscored our Big Ten opponents when Gaines and Nance were paired up, without Beran.
8) Greer was generally a negative except when paired with Nance and Young (about 1 mpg).
For those who understand statistics, I did a regression of the performance of the 5 man lineups versus the time Collins played them. (How well the team did with each 5 man group, compared to the amount of playing time that group got)
The correlation was zero. Put another way, in general, the lineups that had success got no more playing time. The lineups that were unsuccessful got no less playing time. Playing time was random vs performance.
The season would have been much better if Collins had just used
Nance/Kopp/Buie/Audige/Gaines
and
Young/Kopp/Buie/Audige/Beran
instead of the disastrous "starting lineup"
Nance/Kopp/Buie/Audige/Beran
and more Young/ Nance / anybody
and Ty Berry off the bench
If you try to find really close comparables, only one program makes the list: Stanford. I might be wrong but it's the only power program with the same type of academic standards for athletes BS.
Additionally, they are probably telling recruits all the same regurgitation we are: living in bay area, close(ish) to great city, great diploma, pretty campus.
Going back 36 seasons, Stanford:
1) Made the tournament 16 times
2) Of those 16 times, 12 were under coach Mike Montgomery
3) MM made the tournament 12 out of 18 seasons. 1 final 4
4) MM had only two losing seasons, 5th season at 8-10 and 7th season at 2-16
5) Before MM Stanford had made the tournament once, in 41/42
Going back 40 seasons, excluding Montgomery:
1) Made tournament 4 out of 22 seasons
2) Had 4 coaches in 22 seasons: Tom Davies (4), Trent Johnson (4), Johnny Dawkins (8) and Jerod Haase (6 and counting)
3) Average tenure for above mentioned coaches: 5.5 years. Jerod Haase is still employed but a quick search reveals his seat is getting pretty hot.
So there you go, a true comparable. Conclusions:
1) We are, without a doubt, soooooooooooooo much more patient with coaches
2) Going back 44 seasons to Rich Falk, our average tenure for coaches: 7.3 years
3) Going back 22 seasons, when we really became patient: 11 years, and counting up
4) We have an inferiority complex that makes us believe we will not find our Montgomery. So we wait and wait, instead of keep trying to find him/her
5) Pound the rock baby
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Yes! It’s clear that a great coach is the singular thing that can make all the difference. Many programs have found their own transformational coaches. It’s not impossible to find one, though it is very hard. It’s obvious by now CC isn’t that guy. And the answer, according to many on this board, is apparently to just not try because it’s hard. I just don’t understand that logic.
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