You might have seen CBS Sports college basketball guru Jon Rothstein's tweet on Tuesday about Northwestern. You may have even mocked it with a reply. It's the kind of tweet for which eyeroll emojis were invented.
Despite a losing streak that could reach 13 games on Sunday against Wisconsin, Rothstein stated that this Wildcat team, if it stays intact, could once again wind up in the NCAA Tournament next year.
"Northwestern hasn't won a game since December 26th. That's 52 (now 57) days ago. But Wildcats should bring everyone back. 21-22 could feel like 16-17 in Evanston," he tweeted.
We called that "Costco-sized optimism" in our quote tweet. It's tough to envision these Wildcats, who are still 0-for-2021, bouncing back to make the Big Dance next season.
That said, Rothstein knows that there have been some positive signs this season that could indicate better days are ahead.
Chase Audige looks like a star in the making and the rarest of breeds -- a Wildcat player who can create his own shot. Pete Nance is playing the best, most consistent basketball of his career and has been performing like the player that head coach Chris Collins always envisioned him to be. Northwestern will return everyone from this year’s team and add three talented freshmen next season, giving Collins a full complement of 13 scholarships for the first time in a few years.
The Wildcats play hard every night, regardless of the score or their record, which is a testament to their character, as well as Collins and his staff's ability to motivate them. And Collins keeps saying that they are improving and playing better basketball, even if the results don't bear him out.
However, if you look at this season as a whole, the case can be made that next year might look more like this one.
Boo Buie and Robbie Beran -- two-fifths of the starting lineup before they were replaced a couple weeks ago -- appear to have taken big steps backward in their development. They both look like players who have lost their confidence. Miller Kopp seems to have lost his shooting touch and hasn't made more than two shots from the floor in four games. While that may have more to do with his being the focus of opposing defenses than it does him, it shows that teams can take him out of games.
Most maddeningly, Northwestern still displays a lack of mental toughness in crunch time. They are still committing those "self-inflicted wounds," as Collins calls them -- a turnover here, a bad shot there -- that cause them to blow late leads and lose games. And then there are the routine prolonged scoring droughts that have become as commonplace as facial masks.
Back in December, when the Wildcats came out of the gate 6-1 and won their first three Big Ten games for the first time in 53 years, Collins stated that this Northwestern team had turned the corner. The Wildcats were playing with confidence borne from all the losing they had endured. They had learned how to win, we were told, after winning just 21 of 63 games over the previous two seasons.
Now those words seem as empty as the stands at Welsh-Ryan Arena. If Northwestern loses to the No. 21 Badgers on Sunday, they will have lost 13 straight games, the longest losing streak of Collins’ tenure and the program’s longest in 21 years.
This season stands in stark contrast to 2015-16, the year before the Wildcats broke through to earn the first NCAA bid in school history. That team went 20-12 and 8-10 in the Big Ten, matching the program's best record in conference play since 1967-68. The Wildcats won 10 games in a row that season before sliding off the tournament bubble with a brutal 2-8 stretch late in the season.
Granted, that Big Ten wasn't as strong as this one. The 2015-16 Wildcats didn't beat a single ranked team all season, while this one has the toughest schedule in the nation, according to KenPom.com, and has faced ranked opponents in 12 of their 15 league games to date.
But those 2015-16 Cats also played the entire season without Vic Law, a starter and one of their rising stars, who was sidelined after undergoing labrum surgery before the season. They got him back and made their run to glory the next year.
Maybe, with another year of experience under their belts, the Wildcats will be primed for a another historic tourney run. The Big Ten doesn’t figure to be as unforgiving next year. Maybe they'll take care of those late-game breakdowns that have hounded them for years.
Rothstein can obviously see that happening for Northwestern. But, right now, in the throes of a losing streak that’s on the verge of reaching two months, that seems like an awfully big leap.
