If we had to approve of every administrative decision before purchasing tickets, I would guess almost no one would ever show up. I purchase season tickets because I like watching college basketball live, I live down the street, I have a NU grad degree, and wins and losses don't mean that much to me.
Simmons in portal?
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The Georgetown AD said this, “In this ever evolving landscape of college athletics we are committed to Coach Ewing, and we are working with him to evaluate every aspect of the men’s basketball program and to make the necessary changes for him to put us back on the path to success for next year." Then Ewing replaced two assistant coaches. Make of that what you will.
CCC is not worth his salt, yours or mine. If the assistants were forced upon him, what is he going to do - quit? Hurray!!! Yes please. Do it yesterday.
No, he will shut up as the embroiled coach and pray for a turnaround so he can depart for a perceived better pastures. The irony would be whether those forced new coaches turned it around or CCC suddenly evolved.... I wouldn't care either way. Total means justifies the ends.
Oh, and when gcg says that this approach will tarnish the chance of attracting any good coach in the future: Well, first, the NU position alone already detracts. Second, NU is probably going to need to find the young, undiscovered coach in the lower levels anyway and that guy will be facing a big salary bump and competition bump. If hog tying the former overpaid and underproducing coach deters that candidate, he probably wasn't coming here anyway.
I see zero downside to doing everything but firing CCC. The guy should resign. So, since NU won't buy him off and he won't go away, do other things. Heck, this could be an audition (not preferably but realistically) for the next head coach among the various assistants brought in by the admin. Wanna make it real fun, name one of them Assoc Head Coach or Asst Head Coach. I wouldn't care and would actually support the AD with the balls to take a proactive, not typical NU passive, approach.
There is better basketball at Evanston High, also down the street. But this is the kind of fan NU AD relies upon to justify mismanagement.
I would never hire Collins nor Ewing. Ewing's failure was as predictable as Chris Mullin's. Michigan may have been the outlier in hiring an NBA coach who can get it done at the college level. It's a completely different animal. Only the always pathetically-low performance standards kept Collins in his job. NU could afford the buyout, but I guarantee you that they question if they will be able to find someone better.
Won big ten CoY and won a conference title and a few trips to the sweet 16. I don’t like the guy but he’s getting the job done
Agree with Vassar. The verdict is in on Howard. He can both recruit and coach.
However, in todays environment in a Power 5 program you’re only as good as your last season.
A big problem over the last couple years has been COVID and we have likely been more affected than most other programs. Part was the shutting down of many of our preseason games. Also the changing of schedules to have a few conference games early did not help. Just saying that these adversely affected the program at key points in the team development. And while true that other programs were also affected, just saying the affect on NU was probably more dramatic. Even COVID having guys around for 5th and 6th years that we really did not get
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I'm surprised you'd go there with Covid.
I saw a coach with little creativity on either end of the court, running a stagnant offense and changing nothing as the losses just piled up. He couldn't figure out what to do with his fairly talented roster and largely stuck with something that was clearly not working - when he had a lot of options. The offense literally never changed and any opponent with a committed coaching staff knew what we were trying to do.
And he basically had the attitude of "we run good plays, but my players aren't good enough" then played guys who weren't as good as their teammates.
Simmons will not be playing anywhere this season. He has some personal things to deal with.
As long as that personal thing isn't commonly known as Chris Collins...
Hopefully nothing too serious for Simmons.
If he doesn’t transfer anywhere, would he presumably be able to rejoin NU as a sophomore in ‘23-‘24?
I’m expecting lots of changes starting next spring.
More importantly, hopefully the young man is well and is able to get through whatever issue is affecting him now.
I’m expecting lots of changes starting next spring.
More importantly, hopefully the young man is well and is able to get through whatever issue is affecting him now.
Geezus, you are more relentless than my Cat chasing birds!
Just a light-hearted jab. Meant nothing.
Past coaching patterns did indicate that Simmons was unlikely to ever be a starter for NU under Collins, though.
The record last year would have been a winning record if not for the COVID cancellations And potetnially the year before. And last year, a lot of teams that we faced in BIG had nemisis guys back for 5th and 6th years making everything harder
"If 'ifs' and 'buts' were fruits and nuts, every day would be Christmas."
If Collins were even an average coach we'd have been an NCAA bubble team with a 19-12 overall records and a 9-9 record in the Big Ten.
This assumes we'd have beaten DePaul, which is absolutely not a safe assumption.
As for the year before, we would have had to play 7 additional non-conference games and win all of them to secure a winning record. Admittedly this isn't out of the realm of possibility given our absolutely embarrassing schedule philosophy, but I imagine we would have played at least one preseason tournament and Collins still hasn't managed to win one of those.
