[NU Sports] blah hoops

[Brad Wilson]

So another mediocre men's basketball season staggers
to another disappointing close. 12-12 now, we'll be
lucky to finish 14-15 in the regular season before the
predictable 76-63, or 65-54, or 70-57, loss to
somebody -- does it really matter who? -- in the Big
Ten tournament puts the season out of its misery.

Oh, and there's enough misery to go around. This and
that much-touted player doesn't, quite, work out;
injuries and illness seem to strike in numbers vastly
disporportionate to other Big 10 teams; we're too
small, no one can rebound; the defense is a step slow
getting in shooters' faces; amid the occasional good
game from the offense are littered several horrid
clinkers, frigid-shooting affairs that would make high
school coaches blanch. There's stupid basketball, bad
decision making, a general gloom.

The results are predictable: disastrous non-league
losses to third-rate teams that cripple any postseason
hopes; a few wins, most completely unimpressive, over
who-dat stiffs (like the latest victims, Texas
whatever-Corpus-wherever); a general inability to
compete on the road in the league (except when a
Minnesota does an el-foldo), even at the Black Hole of
the Big Ten, the Bryce Jordan Center; and a few nice
home wins to warm the hearts of the hardy band of
purple fans (who get in the way, it seems to me, of
the real reason McGaw Hall exists: to provide the
other Big 10 alumni bases a Chicagoland
home-away-from-home to come and watch their teams
without many distractions). Such wins -- Illinois last
year, Indiana this year -- are like tiny lumps of
coal, weakly burning in a dingy fireplace, that the
purple faithful huddle around each winter in a
desperate effort to keep their hopes for better, for
more -- for something other than the same old results
-- at least warm, or even alive. 

So I want to fire the coach, right? Well, no. I think
Bill Carmody is a good coach. I think he works hard as
hell. I doubt we'll ever get a better coach. Certainly
in class, conduct and character he's a winner and
complete credit to NU.

But the coach doesn't matter, it seems. Falk, Foster,
Byrdsong, O'Neill, Carmody, the song remains the same.
The team is: not bad; occasionally awful; pretty good
sometimes, but never, it would seem, quite good
enough.

I suggest this is NU's basketball fate: not quite good
enough. And it will stay that way, no matter who
coaches, no matter who gets brought in, no matter what
rebuilding plan. Why? Because. Because it's NU. That's
sufficient when it comes to the hardwood, it would
appear.

Brad Wilson

 



 






























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"Life is more delectable/When it's disrespectable." -- Lorenz Hart 

"Quis ipsos custodes custodiet?" -- Juvenal

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