Northwestern men’s basketball coach Chris Collins held his team’s first practice session of the 2014-15 season on Friday at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
The inevitable question about the Wildcats’ chances of earning a first-ever NCAA tournament appearance greeted the second-year coach.
“You come into every season…if you don’t have aspirations to be in the postseason, then you shouldn’t be playing,” Collins said. “We’re excited. We have a whole new team. We have some veteran guys coming back who played a lot and we’ve got good experience. We’re excited about our young guys. That being said, they are still young guys. There is going to be a learning curve. The Big 10 is a nice proving ground for them. So we have to continue to evolve. It starts today and we just have to have the mindset that we have to get better every day.”
The Wildcats have six returning players and seven newcomers.
“With so many new guys, we’re still kind of figuring out who to play together, what’s going to be good groups,” Collins said. “There is a lot of competition, which I love. We didn’t have that as much last year in practice. We can put two lineups out there that can play against each other in practice that are very competitive. And that’s how you get better…playing against good players. And the guys who worked very hard in the preseason are anxious to get started.”
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Northwestern finished 6-12 in the Big 10 last season; 14-19 overall.
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