Excellent article in The Athletic today. Some excerpts:
EVANSTON, Ill. — Moving day, Chris Collins guesses, will be sometime in December. The schedule lull during final exams means Northwestern can shift its entire basketball operation, without interrupting too much, from a retrofitted house near campus to the new $20 million Trienens Performance Center practice facility about a mile away. It’s still at least a few weeks until the building is something more than just a massive glossy picture leaning against a couch in Collins’ temporary office, showcasing to recruits and any other visitors what will be. But it is, theoretically, the last bit of renovating damn near everything about the program.
“We’ve invested a lot of time in the offseason on shooting more, getting these guys confident where you can make shots and make plays,” Collins says. “You get down deep in the clock, when things break down, do you have guys that can manufacture offense? You try to do that when you’re scrimmaging. You try to maybe get into a late-clock (scenario) and try to figure out things that’ll work for your team. Then I think a lot of it is skill development: being able to get your own shot, playing a lot of one-on-one where, OK, there’s six seconds on the shot clock and everything’s broken down. Can I get by somebody and create a shot for myself or others? Can I get something late? That’s what the really good teams have.”
Boo Buie brings an undeniably fantastic appellation to Evanston. Now comes the challenge of making that name synonymous with steady point guard play. The 6-2 freshman arrives as a three-star recruit and the 327th-ranked player in the Class of 2019, and there’s a belief Buie will outperform the rankings, because, for one, Collins believes the rankings were hooey. “I thought he was very under-recruited,” Collins says. “We saw him go toe-to-toe with high-major guards and play great.” If Buie is good enough to run the operation from the start, no one will complain. Someone has to be a decent offensive initiator for this team, and having two options is better than none.
How much Robbie Beran veers away from Kopp’s pattern could be a variable that swings Northwestern’s season. He, too, is a four-star freshman. He, too, is a top 100-ish recruit. He, too, has nice size (listed at 6-9 and 207 pounds), which should enable him to be a floor-stretcher on offense. The bulk of freshman precedent suggests Beran will slam into a wall at some point. This would not be his fault. But can Beran be a fairly high-level contributor before that, helping to give Northwestern at least a little cushion to work with, and can he minimize the almost inevitable slump in January or February?
Whatever you think of the roster last season, Northwestern could run out three bigs and have at least a vague idea of what to expect from each. It might be a stretch to call that a luxury, but the Wildcats won’t enjoy experienced depth to begin this season. Jared Jones will get early opportunities to help. At 6-10 and 240 pounds, the freshman brings a Big Ten-ready frame to campus. Navigating the defensive intricacies and avoiding silly fouls will be the first step, though Gaines deems Jones “one of our best ‘big’ defenders” due to the ability Jones showed in switching on to guards during the European swing. “He’s got a motor, he can really run and he’s got a skill set,” Collins says.
Ryan Young, meanwhile, started his career on the developmental track. The 6-10 former three-star recruit redshirted last season, which gives him the advantage of added strength and system knowledge before he takes the floor but little else. “The thing I like about Ryan, he’s an elite rebounder,” Collins says. “He really gets on the glass, which we need.”
Can Spencer be a rotation guard? He averaged 14.5 points and 6.3 assists in those four overseas games, convincing Collins that Spencer could contribute, even if the competition level didn’t exactly mirror college hoops. As critically, given the makeup of this team: A headstrong winner has entered the building. There’s precisely one guy in the locker room who can claim to have been the best in the entire nation at whatever he was doing, and therefore have the credibility of knowing what is required to reach that level.
“If you’re great and you believe you’re great, you believe in yourself almost in an arrogant way,” Collins says. “There’s got to be a confidence to be that good, and he has that. He believes he’s really good. I like that. I like someone who believes they can play against anybody. With all these young guys, we need some of that. We need somebody who is saying the right things in the locker room and leading with that attitude. You get out there in competitive situations and he ends up winning a lot. He might not be the best guy. But good things tend to happen when he’s out there.”
Final report
Northwestern has to be built on the get-old, stay-old plan. Instantly transformative recruits rarely will show up in Evanston, so the more reliable path to consistent success is long-term player development. That might have been lost somewhat in the chase to sustain the momentum from 2017. Some bad breaks didn’t help, but some of those breaks were also self-inflicted. In the end, with 11 first- and second-year players on the roster, it’s like Collins and his staff have arrived to build the thing nearly from scratch, except this time with a track record of a couple of 20-win seasons plus a new home arena and practice facility to show off.
https://theathletic.com/1202932/201...success-northwestern-is-back-at-a-crossroads/
EVANSTON, Ill. — Moving day, Chris Collins guesses, will be sometime in December. The schedule lull during final exams means Northwestern can shift its entire basketball operation, without interrupting too much, from a retrofitted house near campus to the new $20 million Trienens Performance Center practice facility about a mile away. It’s still at least a few weeks until the building is something more than just a massive glossy picture leaning against a couch in Collins’ temporary office, showcasing to recruits and any other visitors what will be. But it is, theoretically, the last bit of renovating damn near everything about the program.
“We’ve invested a lot of time in the offseason on shooting more, getting these guys confident where you can make shots and make plays,” Collins says. “You get down deep in the clock, when things break down, do you have guys that can manufacture offense? You try to do that when you’re scrimmaging. You try to maybe get into a late-clock (scenario) and try to figure out things that’ll work for your team. Then I think a lot of it is skill development: being able to get your own shot, playing a lot of one-on-one where, OK, there’s six seconds on the shot clock and everything’s broken down. Can I get by somebody and create a shot for myself or others? Can I get something late? That’s what the really good teams have.”
Boo Buie brings an undeniably fantastic appellation to Evanston. Now comes the challenge of making that name synonymous with steady point guard play. The 6-2 freshman arrives as a three-star recruit and the 327th-ranked player in the Class of 2019, and there’s a belief Buie will outperform the rankings, because, for one, Collins believes the rankings were hooey. “I thought he was very under-recruited,” Collins says. “We saw him go toe-to-toe with high-major guards and play great.” If Buie is good enough to run the operation from the start, no one will complain. Someone has to be a decent offensive initiator for this team, and having two options is better than none.
How much Robbie Beran veers away from Kopp’s pattern could be a variable that swings Northwestern’s season. He, too, is a four-star freshman. He, too, is a top 100-ish recruit. He, too, has nice size (listed at 6-9 and 207 pounds), which should enable him to be a floor-stretcher on offense. The bulk of freshman precedent suggests Beran will slam into a wall at some point. This would not be his fault. But can Beran be a fairly high-level contributor before that, helping to give Northwestern at least a little cushion to work with, and can he minimize the almost inevitable slump in January or February?
Whatever you think of the roster last season, Northwestern could run out three bigs and have at least a vague idea of what to expect from each. It might be a stretch to call that a luxury, but the Wildcats won’t enjoy experienced depth to begin this season. Jared Jones will get early opportunities to help. At 6-10 and 240 pounds, the freshman brings a Big Ten-ready frame to campus. Navigating the defensive intricacies and avoiding silly fouls will be the first step, though Gaines deems Jones “one of our best ‘big’ defenders” due to the ability Jones showed in switching on to guards during the European swing. “He’s got a motor, he can really run and he’s got a skill set,” Collins says.
Ryan Young, meanwhile, started his career on the developmental track. The 6-10 former three-star recruit redshirted last season, which gives him the advantage of added strength and system knowledge before he takes the floor but little else. “The thing I like about Ryan, he’s an elite rebounder,” Collins says. “He really gets on the glass, which we need.”
Can Spencer be a rotation guard? He averaged 14.5 points and 6.3 assists in those four overseas games, convincing Collins that Spencer could contribute, even if the competition level didn’t exactly mirror college hoops. As critically, given the makeup of this team: A headstrong winner has entered the building. There’s precisely one guy in the locker room who can claim to have been the best in the entire nation at whatever he was doing, and therefore have the credibility of knowing what is required to reach that level.
“If you’re great and you believe you’re great, you believe in yourself almost in an arrogant way,” Collins says. “There’s got to be a confidence to be that good, and he has that. He believes he’s really good. I like that. I like someone who believes they can play against anybody. With all these young guys, we need some of that. We need somebody who is saying the right things in the locker room and leading with that attitude. You get out there in competitive situations and he ends up winning a lot. He might not be the best guy. But good things tend to happen when he’s out there.”
Final report
Northwestern has to be built on the get-old, stay-old plan. Instantly transformative recruits rarely will show up in Evanston, so the more reliable path to consistent success is long-term player development. That might have been lost somewhat in the chase to sustain the momentum from 2017. Some bad breaks didn’t help, but some of those breaks were also self-inflicted. In the end, with 11 first- and second-year players on the roster, it’s like Collins and his staff have arrived to build the thing nearly from scratch, except this time with a track record of a couple of 20-win seasons plus a new home arena and practice facility to show off.
https://theathletic.com/1202932/201...success-northwestern-is-back-at-a-crossroads/
