NU has not come close to reaching its ceiling as a program, simply because there have been too many recruiting misses. Some were self-inflicted (Vassar), others players didn't develop as planned (Ash, Brown), some that had bright futures (Falzon and Ivanauskas were the highest-rated recruits in the 2015 and 2016 classes, remember) were hobbled by injury year after year. Not to mention the Lathon situation, plus all the players for whom NU was a finalist, but ultimately just missed out on (at least 3-4 guys in the 2017 class, leaving NU with only Gaines). I don't follow every other team's recruiting, but this is not normal.
And yet -- NU has made it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever and has a brand new arena to showcase. Collins is growing as a coach. This team looks like it can finish in the middle of the Big Ten this year and capture some momentum back after last year's debacle.
The 2020 class is the chance for Collins to really reload and start to build something special. Hopefully add two really strong guards to go along with Kopp, Nance and Beran on the wings. That, in turn, would capture the attention of Max Christie in 2021. Then we're off to the races.
The key is for Collins to get maximum results in the present while having that vision for the future. I think he's done well given the pitfalls. Look forward to a great rest of the season.
Yeah, I agree with everything you've said.
I think if we were to compare the football program to the basketball program, then naturally we'd say the football program is much closer to its ceiling than the basketball program.
Fitz himself says NU will never be a football factory like Ohio State, but it's pretty clear that we can succeed with highly disciplined teams with comparable Big Ten talent to other schools in our range and making sure that we hit enough on what are typically much smaller classes on average.
What does that get you? A program that can go bowling most years and compete for and win the division every few years. With the new facility (and a new stadium in the coming years), I do think our ceiling there is probably NY6 bowls and Big Ten championships a few times in a decade, but it's clearly much more difficult to get past that type of ceiling unless you're a football factory that can load up on talent... [Basically, what Wisconsin has done the past 25-30 years or Stanford the past 10 years feels like the ceiling that Northwestern could hit someday not too far in the future]
With football, you really need like a bunch of those 4-5 star "difference maker" types of players every year to take that next step (especially at the skill positions and on the lines); the programs that regularly reload and rarely slip have that. Can Northwestern get to the point where we're pulling those guys in? Sure. But the national powers will always get a ton of those guys, so it's never a level playing field.
On the other hand, basketball is completely different. With basketball, you just need a couple of good players and then 1-2 great players.
And once you hit on 1-2 of those great players and get to a Final Four, with a coach like CC, it should be able to snowball further.
There's really no reason why Northwestern can't aspire to the heights that other programs like Duke or Villanova have reached. There's not really any such thing as a "basketball factory" since anybody with superstar talent can reach the NBA from any good program. Just a matter of having a coach that can reel those guys in given that our facilities situation is at the top-level for basketball now.
