The college basketball offseason is here, and we decided to have some fun over the next few months, ranking ALL 364 teams in D1. Number 237 is Northwestern basketball.
Before you say we’re crazy – or that all of this is up for debate, let’s go over the very intricate process of how we came to this conclusion. We took a very statistical approach – with the help of Chat GPT – taking into consideration everything from March Madness wins and finishes, to AP Poll appearances, to conference players of the year. And then, a good friend of ours, Scott Blanchard, took our approach to the MAX.
Click here to visit the FIRST article, which explains how the formula works!
Here’s the breakdown of Northwestern basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 0
- Elite Eights: 0
- Sweet 16s: 0
- NCAA wins: 3
- Bids: 3
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 9.9
- Bids per season: 0.02
- AP Polls: 18
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 7
- NBA players drafted & played: 13
- Conference Players of the Year: 0
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 2
- Conference tournament titles: 0
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 1
Overall scoop on Northwestern basketball
And just like that, we have our first power conference program of the series! Northwestern basketball comes in at No. 237, with just three NCAA Tournament bids in 121 seasons. The Wildcats have never had a player win Big Ten Player of the Year, and they have never won the Big Ten Tournament. All three of their trips to the big dance have come since 2017, which is also insane, to think that it took the Wildcats that long to finally punch their first ticket.
Each time Northwestern has made it to the NCAA Tournament, they’ve won one game. In 2017, the 8-seed Wildcats took down 9-seed Vanderbilt, but lost to 1-seed Gonzaga by six. In 2023, as a 7-seed, they beat 10-seed Boise State, but fell by five to 2-seed UCLA. Then, in 2024, they beat FAU, who had reached the Final Four the year prior, but were handled by UConn.
While Northwestern basketball may have had a rough time in the NCAA Tournament era, they do claim a Pre-tournament Helms national title from 1930-31. In that season, the Wildcats went 16-1 and 11-1 in the Big Ten. It was one of their two Big Ten regular season titles, and it was the first of two Consensus All-American nods for Joe Reiff.
Speaking about Consensus All-Americans, Northwestern has had SEVEN total. Besides Reiff’s two, Evan Eschmeyer had one in 1999, while Max Morris was named in 1945 and 1946, and Otto Graham (yes, the football player) in 1943 and 1944.
As you can see, Northwestern is a historical program and has had some outstanding talent in the early years of college hoops. But they couldn’t get anything going for decades after that, with Eschmeyer as a bit of a random case. In fact, despite his 19.6 points per game and 10.1 rebounds per game, Northwestern only won 15 games in 1998-99, but he was considered one of the best big men in the game.
We really can’t go through this article without at least mentioning Boo Buie’s name and how integral he was to the Wildcats’ success. A player with that name and of that caliber can’t be left out.
But we also can’t leave out head coach Chris Collins, who has brought some hope to the program. He’s delivered them all three tourney trips and in 13 seasons, has gone 209-209, which is second in Northwestern basketball history only to Dutch Lonborg’s 236-203 record from 1928-50. 10 other NW coaches have coached at least 100 games, but all went under .500.
So, for a Big Ten school to be ranked this low is pretty bad, but no surprise it’s Northwestern. However, some surprises that they had a deeper history than some may think!