No one thought that when Northwestern basketball made its first-ever NCAA Tournament and then won its first NCAA tourney game in 2017, the Wildcats would become a colossus. No one thought that. This is still Northwestern. One season does not a transformation make. This was not going to become a powerhouse program which would snag high seeds in March most years. However, it was certainly reasonable to think that once Chris Collins finally ended an NCAA Tournament drought of nearly 80 years, this program — not too far from Chicago — would capture some of the big city’s high-school talent and significantly raise its floor. No, Northwestern was not in position to become an annual NCAA Tournament team (unlike, say, Wisconsin), but it was definitely in position to bring in quality players who could make the Wildcats regular contenders for NCAA berths.
Northwestern, after 2017, figured to be a program which would be in the mix for NCAA appearances and succeed once every two or three years. Unrelenting annual consistency might have been an overly optimistic expectation, but becoming a program which could reasonably expect to go Dancing every three or four years? That seemed reasonable.
Northwestern’s Big Ten Conference record (not including Big Ten Tournament games) since 2017? 10-30. The Wildcats won only six league games in 2018, four in 2019. They are 0-2 in the conference this season. They are going nowhere quickly. Earlier this season, Northwestern lost to Merrimack College, a brand-new Division I program, at home. The Wildcats are a mess.
The question for Northwestern basketball in the 2020s is not so much when the Wildcats will make their second NCAA Tournament. The question is bigger than that: Will Northwestern have a second act?
It is as though Northwestern spent all this energy and emotion getting to the NCAAs that one time… and then had nothing left for future seasons. The 2017-2018 season was one prolonged hangover. Every Big Ten team treated Northwestern very seriously, much more seriously than before, and the Wildcats were plainly not ready to take everyone’s best punch. It was a new experience for the program. Playing a season one year after making the Big Dance had literally never happened before. Yet, it remained odd that Northwestern had so little emotional fuel and didn’t come especially close to the NCAAs in 2018, with some roster holdovers from the 2017 team.
Right now, Northwestern looks like a program which is out of steam, under a coach who is out of ideas. This might not rate as “stunning,” given that Northwestern basketball lacks a sustained history of winning, but it’s also not what many people imagined at the end of the 2017 season. It was supposed to be better than this. We will see if Northwestern finds its second act in the 2020s, whether under Collins or someone else.