In early January, the University of Michigan fired football coach Rich Rodriguez after just three years on the job. Rodriguez had yet to graduate a class of recruits or fully implement his system, but the Michigan brass decided they needed to draw a line in the sand; the team’s play had failed to achieve results in the win-loss column. However Rodriguez’s departure was also in part a consequence of his greatest success; the Wolverines were worried they were squandering the collegiate career of prized quarterback (and RichRod recruit) Denard Robinson. That’s where Northwestern basketball comes in.
It has really been two entirely distinct seasons for this Wildcats squad: a non-conference stretch that was nothing more than a high-quality set of scrimmages (except the game against now-ranked St. John’s), and the gauntlet of conference play that exposed Northwestern as a bottom-tier Big Ten basketball program. The early stretch of games, where the overwhelming athleticism and chemistry of Coach Bill Carmody’s core triumvirate of Drew Crawford, John Shurna and Juice Thompson tantalized fans with a possible NCAA tournament berth, has made it all the more difficult to watch the Wildcats’ struggles. Whether you sit down to watch a victory like last week’s Illinois upset, or a blowout loss like Sunday’s Penn State massacre, it always ends with the same question: Who are these guys, really?
I think the answer is in the Michigan example. Coach Carmody deserves an extraordinary amount of credit for the recruits he has brought in over the past few years. While Northwestern has ordinarily been forced to keep a keen eye out for potential “steals” in recruiting, Carmody has brought in some bona fide blue-chippers, in particular scoring major coups the last two years with Drew Crawford and JerShon Cobb. He found in Juice Thompson the rarest of assets, a natural leader capable of putting the team on his back from the first day he arrived in Evanston, and he brought in John Shurna, who is a strong senior season away from becoming arguably the greatest basketball player in Northwestern history.
Now that credit has been given where it’s due, we have to face the hard truth: Coach Carmody has taken this program as far as he can, and it’s time to worry about squandering the talents of this outstanding core. Juice Thompson will almost certainly graduate without making the NCAA tournament, through no fault of his own, and that is a tragedy in and of itself. Northwestern cannot make the same mistake with Shurna, Crawford or Cobb.
The criticisms of Coach Carmody are not without basis. His poor clock-management cost Northwestern two wins against Michigan State that could very well be the difference between March Madness and March Sadness. His strict adherence to the Princeton offense may create shots for role players like Alex Marcotullio, but it’s at the expense of the creative ability that stars like Crawford and Cobb can showcase when unleashed in a more straightforward scheme. His trademark 1-3-1 zone is similarly hit-or-miss — as often as it confounds opponents with its strangeness, it can also confound basketball logic (too often does Juice Thompson miss crucial minutes because he is forced into fouling the opposing team’s post players once the zone is broken).
Like Rich Rodriguez, Coach Carmody has put in place some, but not all, the pieces for a really solid system. In Rodriguez’s case, he brought the spread to Michigan and modernized their offense, but left their defense to fall apart. On Coach Carmody’s side, he brought in the scorers to compete with the rest of the Big Ten, but never connected on a solid big man or implemented a proper game plan to truly make the Wildcats a contender.
Even Pat Fitzgerald, the most beloved of all NU coaching figures, occasionally endures a blowout like the Wildcats experienced on Sunday. But he always gives us the sense that there is something to be learned from the experience, and gradually things will get better. Unfortunately, after 11 years of the Carmody era, it’s hard to say what else there is to be learned.