Happy New Year, I guess.
Northwestern’s men’s basketball team finished 2019 on a three game losing streak. And 2020 began with two more losses.
The women’s team finished 2019 with a bang, beating then-No. 12 Maryland by 23 on New Year’s Eve, but had no answers for Iowa in the team’s first game of 2020, losing by 26 at home.
Hey, but Northwestern football didn’t lose!
In this week’s newsletter, we’ll look back at some decades, because that’s what people apparently do when the last digit of a year turns from a 9 to a 0. Exciting!
Plus, I write about why I’m VERY CONCERNED about Northwestern’s men’s basketball team. And I’ll check in on the women’s team, which played two very different games over the past couple weeks.
With that, let’s blame some things.
📵Blame Chris Collins
I’ll do a longer thing on Chris Collins later this year, I’m sure. But after watching Northwestern squander a second-half lead to lose 66-62 at Indiana last night, I’m pretty frustrated with the Wildcats’ head coach.
On one hand, he had only eight healthy scholarship players.
On the other hand, that’s partly because of injuries but ALSO BECAUSE HE DIDN’T FILL HIS 13 ALLOTTED SCHOLARSHIPS WITH ACTIVE PLAYERS (See the section on transfers here).
On one hand, his team was missing arguably its best player (Boo Buie) and built a 10-point lead with 10 minutes left in a Big Ten road game.
On the other hand, his team squandered that lead.
And that’s the point worth dwelling on.
This year, Northwestern has played four games decided by five or fewer points. They’ve lost all of them. In 2018-19, Northwestern went 1-7 in games decided by five or fewer points.
Naturally, Northwestern would be expected to perform poorly in those close games over the past two seasons because, well, they’ve been bad in every game, not just the ones that happen to end up being close.
But according to ESPN’s in-game win probability metric (I honestly don’t have any idea how it’s calculated), Northwestern had a significantly high win probability in nine of those 11 losses over the past two seasons. It’s wild.
2019-20
84.4% win probability with 10 minutes left in a 66-62 loss at Indiana.
78.3% with 2 minutes left in a 67-66 loss to Hartford.
83.8% with 6 minutes left in a 83-78 loss to DePaul.
The 77-72 loss to Michigan State was wire-to-wire.
2018-19
67% with 4 minutes left in OT in a 74-69 loss to Illinois in the Big Ten Tournament.
The 81-76 loss to Illinois was wire-to-wire.
59% with 4 minutes left in a 69-64 loss to Wisconsin.
72% with 14 minutes left in a 59-56 loss to Rutgers.
98.1% with 2 minutes left in a 80-79 loss to Iowa. (This was actually insane.)
72% with 5 minutes left in a 62-60 loss to Michigan.
65% with 3-and-a-half minutes left in a 68-66 loss to Indiana.
Writing, reading, and re-reading this list is incredible.
I don’t have data on other schools or coaches (and taking the time to go through it would be painstaking, so I’m not going to), but it confirms something a lot of Northwestern basketball fans have noticed anecdotally.
In the final minutes of a game, when coaching and strategy tend to matter most, Northwestern has consistently not only failed to win, but they’ve done so from what are often significant advantages.
This data is extremely noisy, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
📵Blame zones
I mean you can’t really blame zones, considering Joe McKeown has his team playing a matchup zone on a lot of possessions. But it was Iowa’s zone defense that did a number on the Wildcats this weekend.
The biggest difference between NU’s upset of Maryland and the noncompetitive loss to Iowa: Northwestern’s ability to draw fouls.
Northwestern shot 38 free throws against Maryland, compared to just 13 against Iowa. Credit goes to Iowa’s defense.
The Wildcats had to battle through a number of minutes-long scoring droughts during their loss to Iowa. Star Lindsey Pulliam was able to pull the ‘Cats out of some of them, but didn’t have the same type of help she had in taking down the Terrapins.
Pulliam put up 25 points against the Hawkeyes, but just one of her teammates was able to reach double figures. Against Maryland, it was a completely different story. Pulliam did her job with 24 points, but three other Wildcats notched double-figure games as well, including sophomore Veronica Burton, who had 23.
The Wildcats take on Minnesota tonight on BTN+.
📵Blame the 1930s
The 2010s made for an inarguably impressive decade for Northwestern football, regardless of how this season ended. But the 2010s might not have been the program’s best decade.
ESPECIALLY IF DICK HANLEY AND PAPPY WALDORF HAVE THEIR SAY.
Hanley and Waldorf coached the football program during the 1930s, a decade in which the the team did the following:
Earned a No. 1 ranking in the AP Poll in 1936 (which they held on to for three games). Hell, Northwestern had to beat No. 11 Notre Dame in the last week of the season for a shot at finishing the year as the top-ranked team in the country … but lost 27-6 in South Bend.
They took down the No. 2 Minnesota Golden Gophers in Evanston in 1938. It was a 6-3 nail-biter.
In three separate seasons (1930, 1931, and 1936), Northwestern took an undefeated record into the final week of the season. Each time, they lost that final game. Two losses came against Notre Dame and one came against Purdue. Northwestern failed to score in two of those three games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Over the course of the 1930s, Northwestern finished with a winning percentage of just under 60%, slightly above the percentage the Wildcats posted in the 2010s.
The 1900s were also a great decade for Northwestern, one in which the team won over 70% of its games. But, I mean, here’s a list of some of the comical opponents Northwestern played in 1903:
North Division High (NU won 22-5)
Englewood High (NU won 35-0)
Northwestern Alumni (NU won 5-0)
Chicago Dental (NU won 18-11)
University of Chicago (a 0-0 tie — NU also tied Notre Dame this same year with a 0-0 score)
Illinois (NU won 12-11 — see what I did there?)
The 1930s might have been the decade in which Northwestern had the most success on the football field. But that doesn’t mean the 2010s weren’t an unbelievable 10 years of football.
In more ways than one, Northwestern rose to national recognition in the past decade.
An appearance in the Big Ten championship game
A first bowl win since 1948
Speaking of bowl games, Northwestern made 7 during the 2010s. Coming into the decade Northwestern made 8 bowl games — total.
And, the team held a union vote, which has undoubtedly shaped the conversation about college athlete compensation moving into the 2020s.
It was quite the decade for Pat Fitzgerald’s program. And one that, as fans, we should be proud of. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be looking for more in 2020 and beyond.
That’s where we’ll end things this week. Thanks for sticking with another edition of 📵Blame the Phones.
And remember, if you want to be one my bag people, it’s here.
Please let me know if you have any questions or ideas. I’d love to hear them.
Take care,
Josh Rosenblat