You might think he’d be bitter. You might think he’d feel cheated, or cursed.
But Jeff Ryan is still very much a team player, and he’s very appreciative of what was a roller coaster five-year career on the Northwestern basketball team. He realizes that while he may not have ended the Wildcats’ NCAA drought, the team has come a long way.
“The big goal coming in for most freshmen is to make the NCAA tournament, and that was pretty disappointing that I, at least, didn’t get the job done,” Ryan said, but he is holding out hope. “If you look at the improvements we made – especially this last year, being able to win a couple of games in the NIT -– I think the program’s in a much better position and it’s definitely a realistic goal for the next generation of players,” he said.
That type of optimism defined Ryan’s career. In the first game of what was supposed to be his senior season in 2009, he tore his left ACL. He used a medical redshirt and opted to stay for the 2010-2011 season, but only played 10 games this season before encountering problems with the same knee.
Instead of giving up, he turned his struggles into a learning experience. He was co-captain of the team this season, and adjusted his leadership technique when he realized he wouldn’t be playing anymore.
“It’s very different being a leader as someone who’s on the court versus someone who’s on the sidelines,” he said. “I changed and became more of a leader in film sessions, or while going over scouting reports, or in the locker room.”
Ryan said that though his injuries forced him to change his role with the team, he still feels like the past two years were a great experience. Even one of the highlights of Ryan’s career came when he was on the sidelines. Aside from the win at Michigan State in 2009, “the experience in this year’s Big Ten Tournament and the NIT wins was definitely a top moment. It’s certainly the furthest we had gotten in my time here and it really showed how far we’ve come.”
Being a sideline captain also helped solidify Ryan’s academic career.
“I really started to notice a link between basketball and school,” said the Learning and Organizational Change major. “You study everything from group dynamics to leadership to teamwork. That was really cool, to get a bigger picture and understand that my time here was not only about learning the game of basketball but really learning life lessons.” When Ryan does find a job, he’d like it to be local so he can stay involved with the basketball program – as a fan.
Though his time on the Welsh-Ryan court is over, Ryan still has one piece of advice for next year’s team. “Realize that the level of work and the level of intensity and focus in everything you do has to increase if we want to be a high-caliber program and a winning program in the Big Ten. Sometimes we just got caught up in a little bubble and didn’t exactly realize just how hard we needed to work,” he said.