NUHoops.com

In response to the post on the loss to DePaul, IvyLeaguer wrote in about the talent level on the current Northwestern roster.

IvyLeaguer wrote:

Isn't it time Bill Carmody realize that he and his staff are unable to recruit a Top 100 player to come to Evanston and that it's time to make some changes so that a better quality of player comes to NU?

Carmody is a great coach. But he is an indifferent recruiter and his three assistants have no experience recruiting Top 100 players. Paul Lee's only other recruiting experience was for the worst hoops program in the Ivy League -- Columbia -- and the other two guys had no college coaching experience until Carmody hired them at NU.

No NU fan should want Carmody to be fired. But no NU fan should think that the players Carmody has brought to NU will EVER get the Cats to the NCAA tournament.

So what the solution? The obvious one is to pony up the money and hire a bonafide top flight recruiter away from a big time program. Sure it will cost a little money -- the Cats will have to improve upon his salary quite a bit to attract someone from a winning program to a loser -- but it's a lot cheaper than hiring a new head coach.

As Gary Barnett showed, it takes a coach with a bigger than life personality to convince kids that a losing program can be turned into a winner. As Bill Foster showed, Top 100 kids like Evan Eschmeyer and Rex Walters can be convinced to sign with NU.

So because Carmody can not get a personality transplant himself, he's going to have to hire an assistant to do the job for him.

But the Cats won't ever play in the NCAA tourney with the type of talent Carmody is bringing in -- and that includes the three kids he signed for next year. None of them are program turners.

AD Mark Murphy has to pressure Carmody to shake up his staff. Or else when Carmody contract runs out he must go so the Cats can hire a go-getter, bigger-than-life personality driven coach who can turn NU hoops around the way Gary Barnett did to football.

All NU fans know that it's easier to turn around a hoops program with just two star recruits than it is to turn around a football team with just two star recruits.

A great and thought-provoking post. I believe Carmody must be going through some soul-searching right now about the state of the program. He said last year that he was surprised the program hadn't won 20 games yet during his tenure. And now he's clearly losing sleep about his backcourt.

I'm concerned about the talent level right now and, with it, the lack of athleticism. The lineup features a bunch of great role players, but no stars. We had expected that Cote could be a viable scoring option this year, but it hasn't happened. So, instead the Cats just have no players who can create their own shot off the dribble or create any mismatches for the defense.

It does only take one or two players to turn the program into an NCAA team, but it doesn't appear those players have arrived yet.