NUHoops.com

Will next season be Bill Carmody's last?
For three straight years the Cats have been the kids who just don't want to play in the postseason, self-destructing just enough times over the course of the season to clinch a sub .500 record.
We say goodbye to those guys -- Vedran, Mo, Evan, Mike -- and wish them luck.
But what of next year?
Does anyone really think any of NU's recruits will be able to step in and replace Vedran's points per game?
Does anyone really think any of NU's recruits will be able to replace the athletic defensive and open floor skills of Mo?
Only if every one of the relatively unheralded Cobble, Ryan, Nash, Baran and, let's hope, Booker, are all better than the gurus expect them to be, as Moore has been this year, will NU make up for the loss of Vedran and Mo.
Let's face it, Cote, Doyle, Scott, and Williams can not be "go-to" guys on offense and so one of these freshmen is going to have to be the 2006-2007 Big Ten's frosh of the year if Carmody is going to make another run at .500 next year.
Meanwhile, formerly reliable losers Purdue and Penn State will be bringing back rosters a lot more talent than Northwestern next year. So will everybody else in the league.
When Tim Doyle is your best returnee, it's hard to predict a winning season.
Can even the most rabid supporter of Cat hoops blame anyone not wearing purple for picking the Cats for dead last next season?
And so what do we do about Carmody, a great coach who can teach but can't inspire or recruit, when he struggles to win five Big Ten games next year.
It was upsetting to read recently in the Daily Herald that one of Carmody's assistants -- an inexperienced high school coach who had never even attempted to recruit a high school athlete to a college before he arrived in Evanston -- say Carmody'staff expected recruiting "to be easy" when they first arrived on campus.
Putting aside the incidental arrogance of anyone assuming that anyone else's job is easy, let's dwell on the galling lack of historical knowledge.
Tex Winter, Bill Foster, Kevin O'Neill were highly respected coaches when they arrived in Evanston, winners all, and they all failed to be able to recruit more than one or two high quality players during their time at NU.
Easy?
How could three Ivy League-bred assistants -- two who had never recruited anyone at all and a third whose only recruiting experienced had been signing kids whose talent level made Columbia the worst program in the Ivy League -- come to NU and think recruiting was going "to be easy"?
It is the height of stupidity.
Carmody must have thought it would be easy, too, because why else would he not hire at least one guy with some proven recruiting ability in a major conference?
And so unless all four of his incoming recruits make the 2007 all-frosh team like Moore did this year, the Cats are going to finish last next year as they struggle to score 45 points a game with no proven scorers, proven rebounders or proven skilled athletes.
We die-hard NU hoops fans will have to suffer for another year watching Carmody's well-coached but unathletic and uninspired kids struggling to compete.
Let's hope NU allows Booker into school -- despite the fact that kid from the Mississippi school system might indeed struggle academically especially if his ACT score is what folks say it is -- for two reasons. The first is he seems like he can score. The second is NU needs more than two black players on the roster otherwise rival coaches will pounce on that fact to do some negative recruiting against NU with future African-American recruits.
So how much more time does Carmody get?
Unless NU has the money to spend to pursue a "hot prospect" or a "name coach" at the end of next season, it will be a tough call for Mark Murphy to make.