Look, no one else is going to come right out and say it, so we will:
Pack your bags, Northwestern basketball lovers. You’re going back to the NCAA Tournament!
“Oh, jeez,” Wildcats coach Chris Collins said before Friday’s practice, barely managing to contain his enthusiasm. “Come on, man.”
Sure, where are we going?
The 14-5 Wildcats — fresh off a 96-91 overtime win against 10th-ranked Illinois — have crashed all the bracketologists’ Big Dance projections. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has them headed to Omaha as a 10 seed. CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm has them going to Charlotte, N.C., as a 9. The Athletic’s Brian Bennett has them in Charlotte as an 8. Fox Sports’ Mike DeCourcy has them Brooklyn-bound as a 9.
This is what happens when you knock off No. 1 Purdue and the Illini on the way to a 5-3 start in Big Ten play — people notice. Too bad they don’t also forget about your unthinkable loss to Chicago State, or else those seed projections might be even better.
For some reason, Collins doesn’t seem to be as ready as some of us are to fish around in the back of the hall closet for his roller bag.
“Do we want to be a team that is playing in March? Have we put ourselves in a good position through 19 games? Absolutely,” he said. “That was the goal. But there’s still 12 league games left, and we’re going to take them one at a time.”
Boy, that’s boring. It’s also technically true Northwestern hasn’t locked up a spot in March Madness or — fine — come anywhere remotely close to doing so. Thrown-together brackets mean approximately as much in late January as that vague concept floating around in your head once again about trying to do your own taxes.
The advanced-metrics geeks with their slide rules and pocket protectors don’t have much use for the Wildcats at this point. The NCAA NET rankings have, as of Friday, six Big Ten teams in the top 60 in the country and not one of them wears purple. KenPom has Northwestern at No. 56 — behind Purdue (2), Illinois (10), Wisconsin (11), Michigan State (16), Nebraska (45), Iowa (49) and Ohio State (50) — and the ESPN power index has the Wildcats at No. 54, with all the same conference foes except for Nebraska in front of them.
The NCAA Tournament selection committee swears by these wonkish equations, so, yeah, Collins’ team is going to have to keep holding up its end of things. With 12 games to go — six each on the road and at Welsh-Ryan Arena, where Ohio State comes calling Saturday — the Wildcats might need to win half of them or more to be in good position.
“But it’s not pressure,” said star guard Boo Buie, who lit up the Illini for 29 points, dominated the overtime period and might be the clutchest closer in town, with all due respect to DeMar DeRozan. “It’s just basketball, and it’s fun. We’re just playing the game that we love to play.”
With Buie always ready to create the next big shot, the Wildcats are 4-2 in conference games that have gone into the final minutes as tossups. They were extremely good in this area last season, when they got back to the tournament for the first time in six years and just the second time ever. Purdue — which has lost as No. 1 in Evanston in back-to-back campaigns — must have nightmares about finding itself in a dark alley with the Wildcats and 2:00 to go on the clock.
“Instead of just hoping to win,” Collins said, “they get into these moments and there’s an expectation of, ‘We’re going to win.’ That’s what the good teams do, and that’s what we’re aspiring to be.”
Sure, a lot still could go wrong. Northwestern still is the place where 49 seasons elapsed between one winning Big Ten record (in 1967-68) and the next (in 2016-17). It’s still the place that hasn’t seen back-to-back winning records in the Big Ten since three straight teams, starting with the 1957-58 squad, went 8-6. The coach then was Bill Rohr, but you totally knew that already.
Yes, it’s still the place where back-to-back Big Dances has yet to happen.
So why is this team the one that’ll end that? Maybe some haven’t noticed, but the Wildcats are scoring 77.8 points per game in conference play, their highest mark in over 50 years. That’s one reason.
Buie is another. Of all the players in the league — Purdue’s Zach Edey included — Buie is the one you want with the ball in his hands and one shot left to win or lose.
And then there’s the whole, which has added up to so much more than the sum of its parts for two seasons running, we all should take a step back and appreciate it.
“The great teams, the really good players, they always want more,” Collins said.
Ah, yes: more. More brackets. More Madness.
Where did we put that travel-size toothpaste again?