(670 The Score) I guess I thought the plan was for something different for Northwestern basketball, that it certainly wasn't supposed to be like this.
A favorite line of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has long been "Good programs attain, great ones sustain," and he has said it since the mid-1980s when he was laying the groundwork for a dynasty.
But are the Wildcats good because they've attained once under coach Chris Collins?
It's hard to confer such status when they followed up a breakthrough performance in 2016-'17 with an immediate return to the old doldrums. That trip to the NCAA Tournament's second round feels like forever ago for Northwestern, after a Big Ten record of 6-12 and a 10th-place conference finish in 2017-'18 and then going 4-16 and ending up 14th in the Big Ten last season.
Collins has had the benefit of new athletic facilities, a remodeled on-campus home arena, a healthy contract extension through 2025 and enthusiastic backing from both athletic director Jim Phillips and sports-friendly school president Morton Schapiro. Even with all of that, his team currently sits at the very bottom of the league at 0-4, with a 5-9 overall record that includes losses to such powerhouses as Merrimack, Radford and Hartford, all three of those at home.
Injuries have the Wildcats currently down to just seven scholarship players too, so don't bank on any midseason change of fortune. It's a mitigating factor but not an excuse. The same goes for the team's youth to which Collins often refers, but almost all of the best teams are able to have a steady supply of underclass talent contributing right away.
And it's not football we're talking about here, either. Even if Collins remains hamstrung by higher academic requirements that limit his recruiting pool, it still just takes a couple of kids who can really play -- and sometimes just one if you luck into a special opportunity. After that comes the tactical side of minimizing talent differential through scheme and deployment.
It sure seems like something has gone sideways in Evanston, and one wonders what the larger plan is to salvage any remaining energy from the school's first-ever meaningful postseason appearance. As we urged previously in this space, that would've been the perfect time to quietly expand recruiting options just a bit at the margins, adding some bandwidth to the talent acquisition efforts. Any fear that allowing lesser students around for the primary purpose of playing basketball would lessen their scholarly reputation should be allayed by the bulletproof world-class standing of Collins' own alma mater.
Alas, the headwind of a more rigorous standard appears to remain, and the only cold comfort for Northwestern amid its slide back to basketball irrelevance is how few people seem to care.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's Bernstein & McKnight Show in midday. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
