Removing their best and worst B1G seasons leaves Collins at .3282 and Carmody at .3280.
Simmons in portal?
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Removing their best and worst B1G seasons leaves Collins at .3282 and Carmody at .3280.
Are u sure about that?
While CC unequivocally elevated recruiting on paper (recruit rankings), it hasn't translated to the hardcourt.
Putting aside earlier BC recruits like VV and Parker, players like Coble, Juice, Shurna, Crawford and Cobb were impact frosh.
CC, despite having a lot more 4* recruits, only really has BMac (a 3*) and Law (more so for his D).
Under CC, we had so many 4* recruits who never lived up to their ranking.
This either means he doesn't have a great eye for talent or his "system" puts his players in a position not primed for success (probably a bit of both).
I'd take less physical talent for players with skill (can get the ball into the bucket).
And would say that the 2012-13 BC team was as physically gifted (Crawford, Swop, Hearn, Cobb, Lumpkin).
Steadily improved the team to get us to the Dance (one of the most memorable NU-related experiences of my life, spent with my now-deceased father) in his first four years.
Has steadily (albeit slowly, and the jury is out for this year, for sure) improved the team in the last 3 years after an unfortunate, but historically predictable lull (there have been just a few lulls in our basketball history…).
Has a better conference record than Carmody despite playing more conferencegames per season (that’s why we’re not nearer to post-season).
Has developed numerous players who are still playing basketball.
Runs sets that get guys open; unfortunately, he can’t make his players’ shots, especially layups or clutch free throws.
Has defenses that rate well in the conference despite a (now lessened, to his credit) gap in athleticism.
I’m not here to say he’s Wooden, or Carmody, and I’ve said many times he deserves (potentially only) one more year. But, I firmly believe he is not worthy of the recent constant bandwagon attacks (including many unfounded reaches) that lack historical perspective, and especially the snide and sometimes nasty, disrespectful remarks.
Has steadily (albeit slowly, and the jury is out for this year, for sure) improved the team in the last 3 years after an unfortunate, but historically predictable lull (there have been just a few lulls in our basketball history…).
Has a better conference record than Carmody despite playing more conferencegames per season (that’s why we’re not nearer to post-season).
Has developed numerous players who are still playing basketball.
Runs sets that get guys open; unfortunately, he can’t make his players’ shots, especially layups or clutch free throws.
Has defenses that rate well in the conference despite a (now lessened, to his credit) gap in athleticism.
I’m not here to say he’s Wooden, or Carmody, and I’ve said many times he deserves (potentially only) one more year. But, I firmly believe he is not worthy of the recent constant bandwagon attacks (including many unfounded reaches) that lack historical perspective, and especially the snide and sometimes nasty, disrespectful remarks.
And it's been all downhill from that with the outlook for next season not being good.
CC inherited a program that was finally winning on a consistent level; the program is now in worse shape - which it shouldn't be (a good coach would have been able to build on that success).
CC basically lucked into 2 things - Lumpkin still having a year of eligibility left due to having to take a RS in his shortened frosh season and hitting the jackpot with Pardon.
Arguably, would also likely not have made the Tourney w/o Taphorn's efficiency from the 3 (not to mention his and Lumpkin's leadership).
After those 2 guys departed, it's all been downhill.
Please, aside from BMac, Law and Pardon - there aren't any players one would put on the same level as Coble, Juice, Shurna and Crawford (and that's not counting earlier BC players like VV and Parker).
Heck, I'd be hard pressed to say that Nance was a better player than Hearn (a walk-on) and Cobb was a better player when healthy.
CC doesn't have a good eye for talent (if he did, so many of his highly rated recruits wouldn't have failed to live up to their ranking/rating), is not very good at X's & O's and repeatedly does a crappy job of building a team.
What the program needs is the antithesis of CC - someone who has an eye for talent (even if only a 3* rated player), is able to go head to head with re to X's & O's against other top coaches and knows how to put the pieces together to build a team.
Seeing a lot of the same mistakes CC made as a young, 1st time HC - but had hoped that he would learn and improve with experience, but that hasn't been the case.
CC inherited a program that was finally winning on a consistent level; the program is now in worse shape - which it shouldn't be (a good coach would have been able to build on that success).
CC basically lucked into 2 things - Lumpkin still having a year of eligibility left due to having to take a RS in his shortened frosh season and hitting the jackpot with Pardon.
Arguably, would also likely not have made the Tourney w/o Taphorn's efficiency from the 3 (not to mention his and Lumpkin's leadership).
After those 2 guys departed, it's all been downhill.
Please, aside from BMac, Law and Pardon - there aren't any players one would put on the same level as Coble, Juice, Shurna and Crawford (and that's not counting earlier BC players like VV and Parker).
Heck, I'd be hard pressed to say that Nance was a better player than Hearn (a walk-on) and Cobb was a better player when healthy.
CC doesn't have a good eye for talent (if he did, so many of his highly rated recruits wouldn't have failed to live up to their ranking/rating), is not very good at X's & O's and repeatedly does a crappy job of building a team.
What the program needs is the antithesis of CC - someone who has an eye for talent (even if only a 3* rated player), is able to go head to head with re to X's & O's against other top coaches and knows how to put the pieces together to build a team.
Seeing a lot of the same mistakes CC made as a young, 1st time HC - but had hoped that he would learn and improve with experience, but that hasn't been the case.
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I don’t quite follow the logic.
I agree with 90% of what you said. Except the 10% that I’d attribute to you believing CC did not elevate recruiting, other than on paper.
If that were the case, then CC would have been an over achiever. Does not compute.
Where I disagree is on the inevitability of the “lull” after that tourney.
Most observers very reasonably expected the 2018 team to go back to the tourney, and many thought it would be even be better than the previous year. It’s been popular to blame that year’s failure on Rosemont (or even somehow on the loss of Sanjay Lumpkin) but both Collins and BMac stated in the media that the team wasn’t prepared mentally or physically for that season. That’s the coach’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen!
So instead of building more momentum, it’s a big step backward. Then CC chases a return to relevance with Taylor, that doesn’t work out and suddenly it’s square one again.
There was no better opportunity ever for the program to take steps forward and it didn’t happen, and the team is where it is now because of that.
I also would argue that conference schedule length has not affected postseason chances. BC’s NIT appearances all came in an 18-game B1G schedule. The league went to 20 games 4 years ago and we wouldn’t have been close to a postseason berth if there were only 18.
Yes Sir. A Dick Bennett type. An overachieving team year after year after year.
How many 4 Stars did he bring to Madison? I'd have to look, but not too many as I recall. A lot of blue collar, high quality basketball players, they knew how to develop bigs (who both BC and CCC are allergic to), actual outside shooters, and team defense. Talent wise, they always had a bunch of Drew Crawford types, and maybe one or two big time talents.
Overachievers. Similar to Loyola. Are there not plenty of Dick Bennett/Porter Moser type coaches out there who are waiting for their BT type big chance?
What about Billy Donlon? He obviously knows what NU is all about, in terms of institutional strengths and shortcomings - I think if Dr Gragg sold him, he'd come back here. Do you hoops experts here think he's a viable option? Or too connected to CCC?
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I was (somewhat) willing to entertain this idea up until last season. The program bottomed out in 2019 and 2020, but recruiting got good again (at least by the rankings) and we were told that the 2021 team was a young team with talent that needed to learn how to win. They went 6-13 with a bunch of painful losses. After that, we were told that 2022 was going to be the year, that this was the culmination of Collins' plan, that all those young highly-rated players were coming into their own and all those close losses were going to turn into wins. And they went... 7-13. And then the transfers started. There's no improvement here. Enough is enough.
Exactly. Styre says it perfectly, as usual.
Gordie, I just don't get your slant on the facts. We all say CCC hasn't produced, you (pretty much only you) say he has - somewhat. That's ok, brother, rock on. But you're wrong.
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Clark Kellogg had them in the Final Four. Epic fail by Collins.
2020: 3-17 conf; 8-23 overall
2021: 6-13 conf; 9-15 overall
2022: 7-13 conf; 15-16 overall
The recent record has improved - facts on which I am not wrong. CCC even stated it in his press conference. Apologies welcome.
No apology coming here. All three of those years we should have won AT LEAST five more games. Without question. That's on your boy.... not the popcorn vendor, or admissions.
The difference in the Big Ten records these two years is likely because the 20-21 team only got to play Nebraska once during the regular season, vs twice in the 21-22 season
Even as you change your rules now - that’s an absurd number to blame on any coach. And did every other coach we had never cause us to lose any games? Please try to make a fair comparison.
All of those records are terrible, and whatever minimal improvement is happening there is about to come to a horrendous, crashing halt.
Gordie, I recall you making the argument that the 2021-22 team was significantly more competitive than the 2020-21 team. And I supported your statement at the time, because the numbers bear that out. We averaged a 71.3 - 64.3 loss in our 20 Big Ten games in 2020-21. Excluding some garbage time.
Last year we averaged a 72.3 - 69.0 loss. That is decidedly more competitive.
But we all EXPECTED the team to be better. We should have been better - the roster was deeper and more experienced. We fell short of expectations. We underachieved.
In the bigger picture, I can't believe anyone is actually looking at a pattern of conference winning percentages that reads 0.556. 0.333, 0.200, 0.150, 0.316, 0.350 and saying thats progress.
Ok, then why didn't that elevated talent translate to a post-season even once during the past 5 seasons?
CC's best class by far was his 1st, and he managed to get lucky with Pardon in his 2nd class.
That's pretty much it.
By no means is saying that BC was good at recruiting, but he had a better eye for talent and knowing the pieces he needed to build a competitive team.
BC got Coble, Juice, Shurna, Crawford and Cobb in back to back to back to back to back classes.
Aside from the center position, I'd take BC's players over CC's and if we go back to VV and move him to the 5, I'd say it's pretty even there (VV having the edge for O and Pardon the edge on D).
The problem with BC is that he never was able to build enough depth to overcome the inevitable injuries.
Of the aforementioned, only Juice managed to escape from having a serious injury.
After Pardon, the center position has been a disaster; same for the PG position after BMac.
CC was infatuated with getting wings and stretch-4s; that's a all fine and all if you have at least adequate talent at the 1 and 5 positions, but that hasn't been the case.
To make matters worse, the wings and stretch-4s CC landed for the most part couldn't shoot consistently, nor could they drive to the basket successfully.
As I had stated before, CC needs to change his recruiting strategy and instead of going after prep school recruits from the NE, he should concentrate on recruiting local/midwest talent (even if less heralded) where he and his staff would have a much better grasp of their game.
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Yes, yes!
And it so happens, Wisky's best player this past season was a lightly recruited 3*.
As long as you have skilled, fundamentally sound players playing within a good system - u have a shot even if athletically less talented.
Is this really what you're hanging your hat on? Lol
Of course there should be improvement with a deeper, upperclass-laden team.
But they once again failed to make the post season.
The Cats were able to do just that under both Byrdsong and KON, so like I've stated, the program actually has taken a step back (not just from the latter half of BC's tenure (where making the postseason was expected), but even predating that (where making the post season once every 4 or 5 years was a realistic expectation).
It's been 5 years now and don't see that streak of futility ending at 6 or 7.
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The Cats have been abysmal in close games under CCC.....We have not had a gamer since Williams and McIntyre.......I was also wondering if the timing of the Simmons exit could be tied to the Nance announcement of going to UNC ?
Katatonic:
You are making valid points, but you know, if Collins is a below average developer of his players, a below average strategist and a below average in-game coach, its pretty easy to understand why a roster of better talent wouldn't translate into more wins.
A lot of things in life follow a cyclical pattern, including college basketball. As a group of players mature, one expects improvement and increasingly better results. That's what happened with the first batch of Collins' recruits, culminating in the magical season in 2016-7. Sadly, 2022 appears to be the peak in this cycle. That was supposed to be the year that our highly-regarded recruits matured as upperclassmen, but the results were disappointing to say the least. Now we'll likely entire a down cycle, and the only question is how low will they go?
We will go very low. Players win games. There are not enough of them.
It’s June - can’t we pretend Boo is going to find that 20ppg stroke and Chase is going to lockdown and distribute and Robbie is going to hit half his threes?
This is the time of year we’re supposed to write about “more depth than ever” and … oh screw it, they allowed 112 points last time out.
Yuck.
Not only failed to make the postseason, but even land a bye to Thursday in the BTT.
Here is the conference results for the recruiting class that was built upon the NCAA tournament trip.
18-19: 14 of 14
19-20: 13 of 14
20-21: 12 of 14
21-22: 11 of 14
I suppose one could call that” progress”, but it’s difficult to argue these results as anything other than outright failure as far as on court play is concerned.
Bringing in Collins was worth it and NU now has the glorious ‘16-17 season to be proud of. I’ll always remember him fondly for that…but he was supposed to the raise bar and take the program from competitive, NIT calibre squads to occasional tournament appearances/top half conference finishes.
Nearly a decade in it is clear CC has failed his mandate. We’ve seen what he can do and while I wish him no ill/will root like heck for 22-23 ‘Cats, the party is long over.
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I will be sad to see Simmons go. I liked what I saw out of him this past year. He reminded me a lot of freshman Haschad, and with a couple of years in the weight room and experience/development, I think he'd be a great junior/senior for NU. If he does leave, good luck to him.
I think it was last week was the deadline that I could put down $100 to hold my season tix for next year. I declined to exercise the option. I had tix since 2005. I have seen in person lots of bad basketball and some really good basketball. Will never forget the Michigan win. Going to a game is a four hour commitment. I am not an alum, so I do not have the emotional tie that many of you do. Collins and his retention made it clear that attendance was not worth the time and effort.
What is sadder is that CCC doesn’t resign. I think shows everything. He is a terrible failure. But he is more concerned about the bucks than his reputation or record. For this reason, I hope this becomes an albatross for him. I would have rather celebrated the man that brought us to the dance. Instead, I mourn the guy that insists on dancing on our grave with a fist full of dollars.
If he resigned last year or this year I’d go on to cheer for him post NU. Now, I just can’t. It’s either greed for someone who is already very wealthy, or hubris.
I’m positive if he told NU he’d take $3M to go away he’d be gone.
Add to that:
1) Last year we actually won 1 less game against relevant teams than the year before. We won 4, year before we won 5. The rest of the wins, both years, were against the teams that don’t matter. Had we played the same schedule we’d have won less games last year. Kinda spooky.
2) When you actually compare the recruiting rankings, with all the caveats they entail, our roster was, last year, not less ranked than IA. And it’s not just IA. We tend to just focus what we have to work with, against the big recruitment classes of the B1G. When, ultimately, our players were fairly close, as they stepped on campus, to the average player at Purdue. Rankings are what they are, but believing, again, that it’s just another fluke is perpetuating the very NU thing that we are just the unluckiest bastards on the planet.
As a few others have indicated, it almost seems like it has to be an academic issue. Or less likely some violation of a team rule that was going to result in a suspension. Or even less likely, some really bad incident between him and Collins.
But, even if he was unhappy with NU or Collins, Simmons wouldn't have entered the transfer portal after the deadline for immediate eligibility at his new school.
I know he roomed with Brooks Barnhizer, which is interesting, as they were both competing for the small forward position and presumably were both disappointed with their playing time.
On the other hand, Simmons also had offers from Princeton, Georgetown and Boston College when he initially chose Northwestern, so it would be a bit surprising that he'd end up on academic probation at NU.
Whatever happened, it isn't a good thing for either Simmons or NU basketball.
The deadline is actually tomorrow (6/24). I've been procrastinating the renewal. Last season was very disappointing- I've been following NU basketball for 30 years so I'm familiar with disappointment- and there were absolutely no consequences. The entire coaching staff returns intact. Next season is almost certain to be worse than this season. Again, I'm aware of NU's basketball history, but there are enough resources being put into the program that five- will be six- years without making the postseason (NIT included) is no longer acceptable.
That said, I probably will renew my seats. I like going to games- have to do something in the Winter- and I live pretty close to the arena.
Sadly, it has been 5 seasons since NU even had a winning record, let alone a postseason appearance......
And it's not impossible to have a winning record at NU, the team had one 4 out of the last 5 seasons before Collins was hired.
When you wrote "no consequences" I assume you meant that the coaches all suffered no economic consequences... The program suffered some negative consequences.
I think it is better than 50% chance that Ryan Young left because Collins was not fired. (Young knew he was graduating - did not take part in Senior Day, transferred 10 days after Collins was retained).
The word I got secondhand from a player was that the whole team expected their coach to be fired and that several were hoping it would happen.
Right, direct consequences for the coaches staff. Then there's the second order consequences you mentioned (plus declining fan interest and harder recruiting). Not firing CC was bad, but to not even demand he bring in some new assistants (I believe that's what Georgetown did with Ewing) is really frustrating. I just don't understand how the AD/big donors could decide keeping the status quo was acceptable. But hey, I renewed my tickets so I guess I've approved their decision. I'll be in the first row of the balcony watching Duke and UNC games on my phone.
No head coach worth his salt and with any self-respect would allow an AD to dictate who is on his staff. If you have that little confidence in the head coach, then you just fire him. I can't imagine any head coach signing a contract with any school knowing that the AD will meddle in personnel decisions.Right, direct consequences for the coaches staff. Then there's the second order consequences you mentioned (plus declining fan interest and harder recruiting). Not firing CC was bad, but to not even demand he bring in some new assistants (I believe that's what Georgetown did with Ewing) is really frustrating. I just don't understand how the AD/big donors could decide keeping the status quo was acceptable. But hey, I renewed my tickets so I guess I've approved their decision. I'll be in the first row of the balcony watching Duke and UNC games on my phone.
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