[NU Sports] future of basketball at NU? Grim, gloomy and going nowhere

[Brad Wilson]

If we fire Carmody we won't get anybody better. But it's clear he's probably not the guy to end the streak either. I don't have an answer. I think hiring a high school coach would be a disaster (Bob Wade/Maryland for an example). We could get some hotshot Armani-suited oil-slick assistant from a power but he'd get quickly frustrated and flee at the first open job. And getting a big-time established coach to come to NU is a fantasy.

I do have one way to improve the hoops team almost immediately. I reject it and DO NOT advocate it, but it would work: give the basketball team 5 exemptions from admission standards. Not total exemptions but pretty wide ones. That would work, I guarantee it. I'd be horrified, personally, bit it would work. I suspect this is how Georgetown stays competitive with Louisville, Cincinnati, et al. Or how Harvard, dismal for a century, suddenly improved, waddaya know, funny thing eh?


New facilities? Could help, but do we think NU is building a palace like OSU or Michigan State or Wisconsin have? No. So we'll still be second-rate, just a nicer second-rate. Will that make a difference in recruiting Mr. Hoops Stud? I doubt it.

Dennis' point about rebounding and big men gets an amen from me -- it is no coincidence Penn State's best hoops moments have come when they have had a dominating big man -- but big men can prosper in the Princeton system, too. Just have to be the right kind of big men. But does firing Carmody suddenly mean Mr. 7-0 Super Stud will flock to NU? I doubt it.

No answers here frankly. As opposed to many of you, I didn't see this team as an NCAA tournament team and was skeptical all season long about it. Didn't I bet somebody a soda NU wouldn't make it?  My default position on NU hoops is doom and gloom and I see little reason to change that coming up.

I believe the great moment -- the moment that could have been the breakthrough but then was lost -- was when Coble quit. Coble, Shurna, etc. all together would have been an NCAA tournament team without any doubt. But it's NU hoops -- so Cobl quits, Rex Walters transfers., and the purple-clad faithful troop off endlessly into the darkness of dismal oblivion.

Anybody know a Gary Barnett, basketball version?

Brad Wilson





 
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