Post by Commissioner on May 4, 2023 8:22:16 GMT -5
Chris Collins has a pretty sweet gig. In ten years as head coach at Northwestern, he's had 7 losing seasons. In those 7 seasons, he finished 10th, 10th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 13th, and 12th om the Big 14 standings. In one of his non-losing seasons, he finished 9th. However, in 2016-17 and 2022-23, the Wildcats made the NCAA tournament and won a game. Collins got a three year extension from the University this week.
The moral of the story is, sometimes the best place for a coach to be is a bad basketball program at a University with no expectations and very few demands. Nice work if you can get it.
In fairness to Collins (and Northwestern's decision to extend his contract):
1. Prior to Collins, Northwestern had never appeared in the NCAA tournament. As Sam notes, they've been there twice under Collins.
2. Collins has had more 20-win seasons than in all of Northwestern history prior to his arrival.
3. In the 44 seasons before Collins' arrival, Northwestern had cracked the national rankings once--a #25 ranking for one week in 2009. Since polls began in 1949, they had been ranked at any point in just 4 seasons. Under Collins, Northwestern has been nationally ranked in 4 different seasons for a total of 7 weeks.
4. This year, Northwestern beat a #1 ranked team for the first time in school history. In 10 years under Collins, Northwestern has 14 wins against ranked teams. In the prior 65 years (since the start of the AP poll), they had just 42 such wins.
It's also worth noting that over the years, Northwestern has had some pretty good coaches fail miserably:
- Three time Big 8 COY (with two FF appearances) Tex Winter (.623 winning percentage elsewhere in 25 seasons elsewhere) went 42-89 at NW from '74 to '78.
- Former national COY Bill Foster (1978 FF, .589 winning percentage in 23 seasons elsewhere) was 54-141 from 1987-1993.
- Ricky Byrdsong returned Detroit to competitiveness in 5 seasons. Following Foster, he was 34-78 in 4 seasons at NW, his last two teams going 7-20 and 7-22.
- After Byrdsong, Kevin O'Neill was 30-56 at Northwestern from 1998-2000. In 13 seasons elsewhere, he took three other schools to the NCAA tournament.
- We could even go back to Harold Olsen, who took Ohio State to 4 Final Four appearances, but had a .423 winning percentage at Northwestern in the 1950s.
In other words, Collins (with some prior groundwork from Bill Carmody, his predecessor from 2001-13) has made Northwestern at least a competitive program, where national rankings and NCAA tournament bids are real possibilities. That's no small achievement. None of this contradicts Sam's point that sometimes it can be nice to be where expectations are lower. But don't underestimate the job Collins has done.