Chicago State Basketball Coach Tracy Dildy is very high on Northwestern this year.
I cannot stress that enough. To say he’s optimistic about the Northwestern Wildcats prospects during the 2016-17 season would be a tremendous understatement.
“This is clearly a NCAA Tournament team,” Dildy said after CSU lost at Northwestern 68-64. “When they get their injured guys back, they’re probably going to be a top one or two team in the Big Ten…Right now they’re one of the top five or six teams in the Big Ten.”
https://soundcloud.com/p-m-banks/chicago-state-coach-tracy-dildy-post-northwestern
“Let’s make sure we all understand that,” Tracy Dildy said as he continued to double, triple, quadruple and quintuple down on his stance.
“This is clearly a NCAA Tournament team. and you can put my name on it. The state will have a NCAA representative this year, so the state can get excited.
“I’ve watched college basketball and the Big Ten every night and I’ve seen every team the Big Ten plays- so get ready to celebrate for that. We played against Wisconsin, and just the shooting ability, the stuff they run, they’re an interesting team and right now I can’t say who’s better, having played Wisconsin.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/809220754428542976
Thus Dildy went out on a limb and said that Northwestern will make the NCAA Tournament for the first in its entire history in March. That comment, in itself, is not all that bold, it’s only bold in the absolutist way in which he delivered it. Lots of people are picking NU to make the tourney for the first time ever this season, and these “So you think NU can dance” prognostications have been made every single year since 2009.
These predictions haven’t worked out, but again take a look at the Chicago Cubs, a franchise with which Northwestern shares many business partners. Their drought finally ended last month. You might have read something about that; it was on all the home pages.
Claiming that NU is in the top five or six in the conference right now? A lot of people are going to disagree with that, but Tracy Dildy can still make a strong case for that.
Northwestern heads into tonight’s showdown with Dayton at the United Center (game preview and prediction at this link) boasting a RPI of 23 and a SoS of 24. Their most impressive win is over Wake Forest (RPI 13), and more importantly, they have no bad losses (Butler is nationally ranked and Notre Dame is really solid). Here’s a link to more on the Northwestern basketball resume up to this point.
Not everyone is going to put NU in the top five or six of their Big Ten power rankings right now, but a lot of people would.
Tracy Dildy on what impressed him the most about the Wildcats
“They are gonna find a way to pick you apart…These guys never wavered, they never panicked, they never lost their confidence…They have grown [since the Notre Dame game].”
He believes that the Cats have developed a resolve that they did not possess earlier in the season. He thinks that if they had already developed the same mindset by the loss to Notre Dame that they displayed against his Chicago State Cougars, they would have achieved another resume win by besting the Irish.
“We went up, but you never saw the expression change,” he said.
“You can see they had a look on them that said ‘hey we’re going to pull through this’ which I didn’t see on them when they played Notre Dame. If they had that same confidence they had against Notre Dame they would have beaten them.”
My only issue with what Tracy Dildy had to say is when he put Northwestern as “top one or two” in the league, once they get healthy. Sorry, but this is where we take diverging paths. The “you can toss a coin between Northwestern and Wisconsin” argument was certainly a stretch, but I was going to let that slide without criticism.
NU ending up the #1 or #2 seed in the B1G Tournament? Naw, can’t see that one happening.
If he is right and I’m wrong though I’ll be the first to Tweet congrats to Tracy Dildy for calling it. Don’t hold your breath though in anticipation.
Getting back to the NCAA tournament declaration, I hope he’s right. Good Lord the state really needs. it. There 347 teams in Division I this year, and 68 will make the tournament. The state of Illinois has 13 teams. None have made it since Illinois in 2013. That means we’re at a three year drought, times 13 each year, and counting.
That’s 39 seasons which have ended in disappointment; hopefully things end much differently in March of 2017.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.