The day after: Assessing Northwestern basketball's mass exodus
After three transfers on Monday raised the total number to eight, fans are up in arms. We assess the damage and explain why not to panic. Yet.
The day after: Assessing Northwestern basketball's mass exodus
- Thread starter lou v
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Corrrect me if I'm wrong but I don't believe we're the only team experiencing this LOL. Just read yesterday that the entire Tennessee women's team (a true blue blood program) basically entered the portal yesterday.
Wouldn't shock me if a Michigan player entered the portal. It's just the current state.
Wouldn't shock me if a Michigan player entered the portal. It's just the current state.
Excellent work Sweet Lou! The voice of reason.The day after: Assessing Northwestern basketball's mass exodus
After three transfers on Monday raised the total number to eight, fans are up in arms. We assess the damage and explain why not to panic. Yet.www.on3.com
Right. But other programs have been able to reload via the portal and recruiting. NU’s record of bringing in an immediate impact player (via portal or recruit) is pretty limited. So this path forward feels very risky. Whereas keeping a couple foundational pieces and supplementing with portal adds would seem less risky.
It has to be that. The exodus proves the degree isn't a determining factor w/o $ and we are going to be out-bid and out-traditioned for the trajectory-changing imports. I think we're in a very hard moment.
The thing is, it’s fixable and the solution is simple and known by everyone. You can literally throw money at the problem to fix it
The conspiracy theorist in me says this is a way to prove a point. We tried to keep this roster with $x, and assuming insiders will know the offers these portal players get, we will be able to say it actually takes $y. If y is significant more than x, maybe it will change some thinking.
I don't think this is paranoid or anything. Collins is under contract through 2030 and he's making over $3M/year, so it is highly unlikely he'll lose his job barring some sort of embarrassment. (He could always take another job, of course, but he's shown no interest in doing so.) As a result, I can see the strategy: obviously last year's team wasn't good enough, so we're dumping most of them and rebuilding via the portal. But if we're unable to sign the players we need, next year's team will also be bad. So if 2026-27 also sucks, Collins can then fairly say to the university "if you don't give us more money there's no hope." But hopefully he'll be given a reasonable budget and next year will be much more competitive. If not, well...
Catmandoo78 scenario takes a minimum of 3 years to work, if it does. I unfortunately predict that we won't attract the kinds of transfers to produce winning Big10 teams during that period. I think the guys we can rent will produce years about like the last one. So I'm afraid it will be awhile.
Michigan won 8 games two years ago and won a title last night. That’s an extreme example, but let’s not act like you couldn’t build a competent, top-half-of-the-Big-Ten team with a competitive NIL package in one offseason.
Maybe, but my guess is that the guys you need to do that don't actually want to be forced to go to class and will tend to favor more sports schools. I think it also depends on the skill of our talent evaluators and deal closers. Some our competition has been pretty good at it.
Maybe Lou can actually ask some real questions of Collins or would that mean he might lose his cozy relationship with him? NU media is absolutely pushovers. Never actually hold anyone accountable.