The first loss in the first game of the first Big Ten basketball tournament is not only an enduring distinction, but also so typically Northwestern.
“A team that has never been to the (NCAA) tournament, been to the NIT twice,” said Kevin O’Neill, reciting from memory the long and short resume of the team he coaches.
Destiny can be so inflexible.
As surely as Bob Knight would command the occasion, that Clem Haskins would be irretrievably grumpy, that however low Ohio State’s basketball program has lapsed it still has not one, but two terrific fight songs, so would Northwestern finish yet another season under yet another coach without one voice raised for more.
“The most untalented major program in America,” said O’Neill of Northwestern, in case we had not heard him the first time.
The Big Ten tournament will just have to proceed without the Wildcats–the Nittany Lions and Buckeyes as well–to what purpose is still not clear, before a substantially meager number of witnesses.
While the United Center seems the ideal location for this enterprise, one recalls the line from “Jaws” where what this tournament needs is not a bigger boat but a smaller building.
Well, maybe it will build to something grand and memorable by Sunday, but for the first day, the only memory made was by Wisconsin in a one-point, last shot survival of Penn State. The Badgers’ reward is Illinois.
Indiana waxed Ohio State without provoking its full-figured coach into any sort of vivid Knightishness, a disappointment but understandable. Wrath should not be wasted on the harmless.
“You could do me one favor,” said Knight to the press when one of his comments included a mild profanity. “Please strike the word `hell.’ That might be considered unsportsmanlike conduct.”
Insufferability does not have to be unfunny.
O’Neill, for one, was impressed with Knight during the incident in which Knight received–probably unfairly–three technicals. The residue of that still is unresolved, but will likely cost Indiana a fine, a small price to pay if it rallies the team around a man for whom the word “beloved” would be considered sarcasm.
“He’s in much better shape than I thought,” O’Neill said. “I was impressed the way he spun around after that second `T.’ I only saw the clips, and it was a bit of an ugly scene.
“But you never see a clip of Bobby smiling or doing something jolly. You always see the worst clips.”
Enough about Knight. He and Indiana are measured against a higher wall than O’Neill and Northwestern. O’Neill is aiming for a bad Indiana season.
“We lost six or seven games in the last 2 minutes,” O’Neill said.
This would appear to be less an apology than a point of promise.
In point of fact, Northwestern lost 16 games in one fashion or another. Still, winning 10 games this season has to be considered a success in O’Neill’s initial year.
“Three years in a row, wins in single digits,” O’Neill said. “That’s rock bottom. I’d hate to be a first-year coach taking over this situation. I’d be dead.”
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He is not the first coach with a plan at Northwestern. Rich Falk had one. Bill Foster had one. Ricky Byrdsong had one. Same plan. Get better recruits. Why will O’Neill make it work when they didn’t?
“People have a niche,” O’Neill said. “Mine is rebuilding programs, I guess.”
Rebuilding assumes that anything was built in the first place.
“I am going to make it work,” swore O’Neill, no pun intended. “I want to see if I can do it. I believe you can turn around any program at any level. I will do it or die trying.
“I believe we are headed in the right direction.”
From the United Center, that would be north.