Northwestern’s 64-62 win over Indiana on Wednesday night gave the team 10 wins in the Big Ten for just the second time in 90 years and all but locked in an NCAA Tournament bid.
Wildcat head coach Chris Collins has treated talking about a potential invitation to the Big Dance all season like it’s a pitcher throwing a no-hitter. But on Wednesday night he finally came clean.
“Everyone talks about tourney talk, tourney talk, tourney talk,” he said. “We’re going to the tournament.”
The Athletic’s Seth Davis even put it in Sharpie.
Northwestern is now 10-5 in the Big Ten and in sole possession of second place. They have seven Quad 1 wins. They’ve beaten four ranked teams for the first time in school history. They are 6-2 on the road. That’s a tournament resume.
The 2016-17 Wildcats, the only NU team to ever make the tournament, didn’t win their 10th Big Ten game until March 1, when they beat Michigan with The Pass. This team has reached that mark with five games left.
“That’s great,” said Collins. “Now we can just focus on getting better… and hopefully find some wins down the stretch.”
It’s also time for the Wildcats to get greedy and set their sights a little higher on the horizon. With a tournament bid in their pocket, the Wildcats can’t ease off the accelerator. They need to punch it to the floor.
Northwestern, a program that is usually trying to get out of a play-in game, is in position to earn a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament. All they have to do is hang on to a spot in the top four in the conference.
ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi has the Wildcats as a seventh seed in his most recent tournament projection, but, with three Quad 1 games remaining, they could climb their way to a higher line. A four- or five-seed doesn't have to face a one- or two-seed in the second round and has a clearer path to the Sweet 16.
And then there’s the biggest prize of all: the Big Ten championship. The Wildcats haven’t won the conference crown since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first year in office (1933), but the planets seem to be aligning for the Cats to make a run.
After Purdue’s loss to Maryland on Thursday night, the Wildcats are just 1.5 games out of first place. Northwestern is 1-0 against Purdue, the lone team above them, and 2-0 against Indiana, the team right behind them, so they hold tiebreakers over both of them.
It’s time to find out how good this team can be because the Wildcats’ first half against Indiana was an eye-opener. Their relentless defense harassed the Hoosiers into 28.6% shooting, while their offense got any shot it wanted and built a commanding 39-20 lead.
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MORE: Takeaways: Northwestern 64, No. 14 Indiana 62 l Five thoughts on Northwestern's epic upset of No. 1 Purdue l Takeaways: Northwestern 64, No. 1 Purdue 58
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Indiana came into Welsh-Ryan Arena as the hottest team in the Big Ten, winners of eight of nine, and the Wildcats doubled them up in the first half. They looked like, dare we say it out loud, Big Ten champions.
If a Big Ten title sounds like a bit of a stretch, think about this: Northwestern just beat the No. 1 and No. 14 teams in the country, back-to-back, and they didn’t shoot well in either game. In fact, they were downright bad, putting up a combined shooting percentage below 40% from the floor and below 25% from beyond the arc.
Against Purdue, they trailed for most of the game, just doing enough offensively to hang around until Chase Audige got hot and ripped off 10 points in less than two minutes.
“Beating the No. 1 team in the country, that literally tells you you can play with, and beat anybody in the country on any given night,” said Boo Buie, the reigning co-Big Ten Player of the Week.
Then, against Indiana, the Wildcats flipped the script. They built a lead that peaked at 21 in the first half and then held on for dear life as the Hoosiers slowly chipped away and finally tied it with 28 seconds left.
No problem. Buie, with noise that shook the rafters swirling around him, calmly dribbled the ball down the floor, got to his spot on the right side of the lane and flipped a floater over Trey Galloway with two seconds left to clinch the win.
“Now our guys are finding ways to win because they believe they should, they believe in each other,” said Collins.
That belief is well-founded. That’s what happens when you win nine of 12 games decided by single digits, when you have the only win for a visiting team at IU’s Assembly Hall all season, and when you play six games in 13 days and win four of them.
Northwestern is a dangerous team right now. There's a little swagger about them, an air not seen before in Evanston.
Audige was asked after the Indiana game whether he thought that he and Buie were the best backcourt in the Big Ten.
"I think we're the best backcourt in the country," he shot back matter-of-factly.
The Wildcats still have a boatload of issues offensively that likely aren't going to be fixed. But when someone steps up as a third scorer to support Audige and Buie, they can be a tough out.
With the tournament secured, it’s time to see what kind of run they might have in them and where this rollicking bandwagon of a season might end up.
As Buie pointed out, this season is not all fairy dust. The Cats are for real.
“This isn’t luck,” he said. “It can’t be luck at this point.”
