40-18 at halftime, nuff said.
Well, the 2nd half was less ugly, but Boo was held to just 9 points, 2-15 overall and 0-3 deep.
Thanks for the great season, Cats.
Chris Collins, time to get to work building the next NCAA tournament-bound roster.
Yes. I echo the thanks for a great season.
Cats seem to have broken free of the apparent shackles put on them for so many years. Hoping the expanded conference will be a plus for them
Harry
Assuming they stay at 20 conference games and a round robin, that means 17 games in the RR plus just 3 repeat opponents. This season there were 13 games in the RR plus 7 repeat opponents. So which 3 opponents you get twice could have a much bigger impact on the conference standings.
The conference did announce they are doing just that, along with 15-team basketball tournaments, basically the same format as now, but with three games on Wednesday. Not sure why they didn’t just go with 16 teams so that Wednesday would have two two-game sessions, just like Thursday and Friday.
-Michael
It looks like the only BT teams to survive to
The Sweet 16 are Purdue and Illinois. I think many of us would agree they were the 2 best teams this year Sorry the top 3 didn’t make it!
Harry
For more Big Ten teams to go deep in the Tournament, they need to earn better seedings, half of the Big Ten teams in the Tournament were 8-9 seeds.
I believe we would have earned a better seed if we hadn’t had the injuries to Ty and Matt. I think the sweet sixteen was very possible if we’d been at full strength. It’s a shame, but what an amazing, fun season!
Shawn
The full-strength loss to Chicago State probably had at least as much impact. It knocked us out of the polls and we never really got close to being back in them.
But it was a fun season to watch, even if frustrating at times.
San Diego State’s coach is calling the Tournament the ‘UConn Invitational’.
FYI – Despite a record well below .500, Chicago State (D-1’s only independent) made the postseason, won its first tourney game and plays again tonight:
I agree that going further in the tournament is a journey.
Better seeds mean better teams. Better teams mean better recruiting, better player development, and better player retention. And then there is just the luck of going through a season with good health for all of your starters. As others have pointed out, the loss of two of our starters really narrowed options for victory for this team.
Duke crushed James Madison in their second round game. Former NU center Ryan Young captained the Duke team and played 15 minutes in a back-up role. If he had chosen to go grad school at Kellogg rather than Fuqua, NU would likely have won some more games and been a higher seed.
VT lost in the second round of the NIT. Robbie Beran is a starter on that team, but didn’t score much. His role appears to be defense and rebounding. He was born in Virginia so perhaps this was a return home for him. Not sure what his impact would have been on this year’s team.
ND didn’t play in the postseason and finished 13th out of 15 in the acc. Julian Roper is a backup guard on what isn’t a very good team. Again unclear what contributions he might have made to this year’s team.
The important positive is that seven years after NU’s first ever NCAA Tourney appearance, NU qualified two years in a row. Also NU has a streak of three first round wins. So hopefully, Collins has become a better coach and recruiter during that six year NCAA drought. Clearly the recruiting landscape has also changed dramatically. Hopefully there are more kids out there like Ryan Langborg who got his economics degree from Princeton and enrolled in the sports management grad program at NU.
Losing Buie, Langborg, and Nicholson will change this team, but hopefully Berry comes back and Collins can demonstrate that this team wasn’t completely dependent on the growth of Buie as a 5 year starter and a leader.
Jeff
Dan Hurley mentioned that NU would have been a five seed without the injuries. I think that is a little high but a six seed would have certainly been in play and a five would not have been out of the question.
By the way, Nicholson is also eligible to return. There’s been no word, that I’ve seen, of whether he and Berry will come back, but I hope so.
I thought that was really classy of Hurley to say we would have been a higher seed.
Shawn