Marketing Buzz:
The
Northwestern Wildcats are getting more aggressive in promoting the program. Athletic director
Jim Phillips said in a statement that the Wildcats are set to begin a campaign on Monday with the slogan,
"Northwestern: Chicago's Big Ten Team."
This seems like a broad change in strategy from typical Northwestern marketing efforts, of which there have been few. But maybe Phillips felt that at this time, with the football team set to take on Illinois at Wrigley Field and the basketball team on the upswing, it was most prudent to start promoting his teams.
People like winners and both of Northwestern's revenue generating programs are set up to win right now.
Still, it seems like this marketing campaign is a direct shot at the guys up in Champaign, Illinois. The Fighting Illini have many fans in Chicago and have packed the United Center for basketball games. Do you think Northwestern could fill it? (Not unless it was like Duke or Kentucky on the other side.) It's fun to dream that someday the Wildcats really will be Chicago's Big Ten Team, but right now the city seems to belong to the Big Ten as a conference and not the Wildcats, but maybe this campaign will change the perception.
Lake The Posts, the site I defer to on anything concerning Northwestern marketing,
is absolutely thrilled by these new developments.
By now you've heard that Kevin Coble will not play for the Northwestern Wildcats during the 2010-11 season, or ever again. The recovery from his broken foot is taking longer than expected, and instead of continuing through grueling rehab with the chance of injuring it again during the season which would come with possible life-altering implications, Coble has decided to hang up his basketball shoes. Of course, this story is getting a lot of national attention because of Northwestern's NCAA Tournament drought and the fact that "everyone" thought that Coble returning was the magic elixir that was going to solve all of the Wildcats' problems.
I'm hear to tell you that "they" were wrong. Coble's return wasn't going to fix the thing that Northwestern has to work on more than anything to make the NCAA Tournament - defense. The Wildcats had one of the most efficient offenses in the country last season. They scored 1.12 points per possession, which ranked 33rd in the country according to Ken Pomeroy's
adjusted efficiency statistics. Being the 33rd best offense in the country is more than enough to make the NCAA Tournament. The problem was Northwestern's 168th ranked defense.
Pico over at
The East Coast Bias, a
St. John's basketball blog, has just finished wrapping up the four-part
Big East roundtable for July. You should go check out each of the pieces to see what people have to say about recruiting and personnel moves going into next season. More than half of the Big East is represented in the roundtable, which goes to show the dedication of the Big East bloggers around the league.
I personally found the fourth piece in the series absolutely fascinating. If you're just curious about what I said about DePaul then you can catch that after the jump.
Now that
Jimmy Collins has announced that he'll be
retiring at the end of August, it is time to start looking into potential replacements. The logical successor at
UIC was supposed to be
Tracy Dildy, but he's now the head coach at
Chicago State. Further, if the Flames' administration had wanted to hire Dildy, wouldn't he have been given some advance warning so that he didn't take the job with the Cougars? I think that would've been the case. (
This article certainly supports that theory.)
So who could be replacing Collins? That's a good question. While UIC director of athletic Jim Schmidt said that he would conduct a national search for a candidate, he probably doesn't need to go very far outside of the Midwest. There are a number of intriguing candidates right around here that could help the Flames become a power in the Horizon League again. After the jump are four candidates the Flames should consider.
The
UIC athletic department just released a statement saying that current men's head basketball coach
Jimmy Collins will be retiring effective August 31, 2010. That's right, if you thought the Chicago coaching carousel had finished, it hasn't. I unfortunately don't have time to comment on this more, but expect much more coverage of Collins' retirement, the timing of things and who could be next in the next few days.
Collins had been the head coach at UIC since 1996.
UIC head athletic director Jim Schmidt said in the release that he'll conduct a national search for a replacement.
"We anticipate great interest in our head men's basketball coaching position," said Schmidt. "The UIC men's basketball program will have the components for an excellent future."
Did no one see this coming? Otherwise why would Tracy Dildy have left for Chicago State? A lot of questions to ask.
The season is fast approaching - we're already halfway done the off season - and schedule notes are starting to leak out as teams fill their openings. Here are some of the more interesting things that are going to be on the schedule this season.
1) DePaul and Loyola will renew their crosstown rivalry - On Saturday, December 18, the Blue Demons and Ramblers will meet up for the first time since 2003. During the 2011-12 season DePaul will go to the Gentile Center for the first time since 1991. This is a big deal for the city of Chicago, because it moves us one step closer to having all of the programs play each other in an informal manner during the season.
A game like this is full of traps for DePaul. What if Loyola wins the game? It would have some serious ramifications on how Blue Demons fans feel about the team heading into the Big East season. Speaking of which, after the jump are DePaul's conference opponents.
All of a sudden
DePaul has two open scholarships for the 2010-11 season. One was created by the Blue Demons finally releasing
Walter Pitchford from his National Letter of Intent. While it was quite the saga, the Blue Demons were well within their rights to ask Pitchford to honor his commitment to the university. The other is going to be created by the transfer of 7'2" center
Kene Obi.
Now, Pitchford never got on campus and it probably seems like Obi never was on campus. Well except for possibly the experience of him playing a Zombie during Midnight Madness last season. Still, it leaves the Blue Demons quite lacking in the size department heading into next season. Especially with the early departure of Mac Koshwal.
What can Oliver Purnell (right) do to make the team more competitive next season and find some players to bang in the post in the Big East?
It seems to me that
Tracy Dildy's hiring at
Chicago State isn't just the long awaited chance for a coach to finally make his mark as the head man. In the end
his hiring, and his coaching career at the school on the South Side of the city, is going to be about two things: the state of
UIC athletics and the ability of the Chicago Public League to provide the student-athletes necessary to compete at the Division I level. Both are extremely important to the quality of college basketball we'll see in the near future in Chicago.
The college basketball off season is nearing its midway point and there are still a lot of unsolved mysteries in the college basketball world. Coaches, players and schedules are all still trying to settle themselves as the season approaches. While there is a lot of exciting news coming out, more on some of those later in the week, here are three - as yet unsolved - biggest mysteries in Chicago college basketball.
Mystery #1 - Who will coach Chicago State? - The Cougars already have a trip scheduled to Hawaii next season, but they don't have a coach. There were rumors that the vacancy was going to be filled shortly, but now we're at the end of June and a coach still hasn't signed up to lead a program that is sorely in need of a figurehead. The search has been going on for almost two and a half months now. Considering that former head coach Benjy Taylor has landed safely at Hawaii, it's only fitting that a non-conference game there is the only date set in stone.
Who ends up finally taking over and trying to cleanup this mess could go a long way towards deciding exactly what Chicago State's place in the new Great West Conference, or Division I collegiate athletics in general, is. With the Great West rumored to be on the verge of losing North Dakota to the Summit League it's an important time in the young conference's history.
I've been away, but I've been collecting some links to news and notes that might be interesting to fans of Chicago college basketball. Of course I've also been waiting for
Chicago State to announce a new head men's basketball coach, but at this point that's like hoping for a sunny day. The coaching search is now over two months long and is by far the latest vacancy to be filled in NCAA Division I. Here is ESPNChicago's Scott Powers on
the search thus far. He seems to think it will be ending shortly.
But onto things that are actually happening.
No talent in the NBA Draft - Want to know why the Chicago area teams are struggling? Because none of them have any top level talent. The NBA Draft is on Thursday and no players from Chicago's five schools appear in Chad Ford's
two round mock draft ($$). Players that Chicago-area fans might recognize are Butler's Gordon Hayward, Tulsa's Ben Uzoh and Jerome Jordan, and Georgetown's Greg Monroe. Monroe was outplayed by
DePaul's Mac Koshwal when the Hoyas played the Blue Demons in Chicago, but Koshwal hasn't been in any of the mock drafts I've read recently. He's a bubble second round player at this point.
