This was supposed to be “the year” for Northwestern basketball. This is what the trials and tribulations of the last few years were building towards.

Yet with six games left in the conference season, Northwestern's record is 12-11 overall and 5-9 in Big Ten games. Getting into the NCAA Tournament would be nothing short of a miracle at this point, and even an NIT bid isn't a sure thing. That hardly makes a 9-30 mark in Big Ten play the last two years seem worth it.

A fish stinks from the head down, and the fact of the matter is that if Northwestern misses the NCAA Tournament this year and is as serious about basketball as the $110 million they sunk into the program suggests, Chris Collins cannot continue to be the head coach of the program.

March 1, 2017, was the day Northwestern basketball changed forever. With the score tied at 65 and 1.7 seconds remaining, Nate Taphorn lofted a full-court pass to Dererk Pardon, who hauled it in and laid the ball in off the glass to give the Cats a 67-65 win over Michigan.

That play gave Northwestern more than just another win; it cemented their berth in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. Northwestern had been eligible for every tournament since 1939, and never qualified for the Big Dance. They had finally broken through on the back of a miracle play. Once they got to Salt Lake City, the Wildcats even won a game before falling to eventual national runner-up Gonzaga.

Collins said repeatedly after that season that it was only the beginning for the program. He envisioned regular trips to the tourney, and even championships. It turned out to be the beginning of a slide back to irrelevance.

No one is confusing Northwestern with a basketball powerhouse. There’s a reason the Wildcats have made just one of 81 tournaments. It isn't easy to win basketball games at Northwestern. The program is hamstrung by academic requirements that none of its rivals face. Recruiting kids to a place with a history as barren as NU's takes a lot of work. The prospects have to be sold on a vision, belief without seeing.

Those recruits saw something in 2017. But has anything about the last five seasons of Northwestern basketball been belief-inspiring? The Cats have a 47-85 record since their trip to the Big Dance in 2017. That's a winning percentage of 35.6%. NU's all-time winning percentage, despite decades upon decades of futility, is 41.6%. These last five seasons have been below even Northwestern's incredibly low standards.

You could come up with reasons for the Wildcats’ struggles. They didn’t have a home in 2018, the year after the tournament, when the program played at Allstate Arena while Welsh-Ryan Arena was renovated. The Big Ten is tougher than ever. But at the same time, the new facilities have given Collins an advantage that none of his predecessors had.

If you had to point to one problem that has plagued Northwestern during their precipitous downfall since the tournament, however, it would be this: the complete inability to win close games. Northwestern is 11-27 in games decided by five points or fewer from the 2017-18 season on, and just 9-20 in Big Ten games.

Some will say that it's all because of rotten luck. Northwestern basketball has had more than its share, it would seem, from key injuries to transfers to decommitments. But if luck played a key role, the win/loss record would be much closer to even after a sample size of 38 five-point games – more than 30% of the games they’ve played over the last four-plus seasons. If NU was, say, 19-19, or even 15-23 in those games, we likely wouldn't be having this conversation. The Wildcats simply can't close out games, and that has always been an issue under Collins.

Even this year, the year NU was supposed to get over the hump with this group that Collins reset the program with. The Cats had taken their lumps by design over the last four seasons, enduring all of that losing, including a losing streak of at least 10 games in each of the past three seasons. This was the year, Collins told us, that they would break through, having learned how to win.

But still, the issue persists.

Northwestern led Penn State by 10 with a little over 10 minutes to go, and they went on to lose. Pete Nance had a free throw that would have given the Wildcats the lead with 11 seconds to go against Maryland, but he missed and NU would go on to lose in double overtime. Last, but not least, NU led Michigan by seven with five minutes remaining, then embarked on a three-minute scoring drought and let the game slip away, eventually losing by two.

You’ll notice that those teams aren’t juggernauts, either. Michigan, at 7-6 in the Big Ten, is on the bubble – where Northwestern had hoped to be – but Penn State and Maryland are behind the Wildcats in the standings. Even one of NU’s few narrow wins, over Rutgers by one in overtime, came after they blew a 24-point second-half lead.

The players absolutely deserve their share of blame for the abundance of collapses Northwestern basketball has endured during the past five years. They have been counted on to make plays, and they haven't.

But blaming only the players ignores the bigger picture. The complete inability to close out games and handle pressure has spanned Collins' nine years. There have been multiple different classes of players who have come and gone, but just about all of his teams struggled to put games away. The one constant is Collins at the end of the bench.

The good will built up from breaking through to March Madness has to run out at some point. Before the 2019-20 season, Collins was given an opportunity he wouldn't have been given at just about any other Power Five school: a chance to completely reset the program. Northwestern played their young guys to give them experience. Other Power Five schools would have brought in a new coach to start over again.

Take another Big Ten team, Rutgers, as an example. Before 2021, Rutgers had not made the NCAA Tournament since 1991. Much like Northwestern, the Scarlet Knights were a far cry from a successful program when Eddie Jordan was hired in 2013, the same year as Collins.

Jordan was fired after three years; he did not get a chance to reset the program, or even field a team that featured all of his recruits. He had a short leash, and when he failed to meet expectations, Rutgers made a change. Jordan had plenty of goodwill built up in Piscataway, too. He was a star player for the Scarlet Knights in 1976 when Rutgers made it to the Final Four.

After firing Jordan, Rutgers went out and hired up-and-coming coach Steve Pikiell from Stony Brook. Pikiell has completely changed the program and, had the 2020 NCAA Tournament not been canceled, the Scarlet Knights would be closing in on their third straight appearance in March Madness.

That is all to say that Northwestern has given Collins more than his fair share of chances; chances that other Big Ten teams won't give even beloved former players. Collins benefitted from the below-sea-level expectations at Northwestern. That reset was supposed to pay dividends this season. So far, however, there hasn't been much of a payoff.

Nance, arguably the team’s best player, is a senior. Starters Chase Audige, Robbie Beran and Boo Buie are juniors. Six of the Wildcats’ top seven leading scorers are juniors or seniors. This is a veteran team that was designed to get into the tournament in 2022. If they don't, the reset would be a failure, and, in this writer’s opinion, it would be time for a change.

Northwestern just isn’t getting a good enough return on the investment it made in the program back in 2017. That’s when the school started spending money like a real, Power Five basketball program. Donors ponied up $110 million to renovate Welsh-Ryan Arena and move it out of the Stone Age. The team got new locker room and practice facilities. Collins received a contract extension through 2025. All signs pointed to Northwestern putting their money where their mouth was and attempting to build a real program that could consistently get into the NCAA Tournament.

Since then, Northwestern hasn't even come close to making the tournament again. They haven’t even fielded a team with a record above .500, or even gotten an invitation to the NIT.

Keeping Collins in place if NU misses the tournament again would be a clear statement that Northwestern isn't serious about building a legitimate Big Ten basketball program. They're just the same old Northwestern, albeit one that plays, and loses, in a much nicer arena.