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Good luck, Northwestern
By Stewart Mandel, CNNSI.com Attention job-seekers: Division I coach wanted for opening at Big Ten school. Salary: Competitive. Qualifications: Patience, patience and patience. Responsibilities: Inherit program that lost four players from 5-25 team and one day take to the NCAA tournament. Note: program has never been to the NCAA tournament. As if replacing its coach two months before the season isn't hard enough, Northwestern AD Rick Taylor has the unenviable task of filling what is unquestionably the worst head coaching job in major college basketball. Kevin O'Neill was considered a major coup when he came to Evanston from Tennessee in 1997. The master recruiter had just ended the Vols' long drought in Memphis to lure current star Tony Harris. Before that he had taken Marquette to the Sweet 16 and helped Lute Olson build a powerhouse at Arizona. But O'Neill learned the hard way that of countless predecessors: You can't win for long at Northwestern. The late Ricky Byrdsong almost did so in his first year, 1994, taking a senior-heavy team to the NIT second round. But his next three teams went 5-22, 7-20 and 7-22. O'Neill took NU to its third-ever postseason berth in '98, but with All-American center Evan Eschmeyer's departure, so went the wins. Even with O'Neill's tireless recruiting efforts, the program stood at least two to three years away from regaining respectability. Before O'Neill was hired to replace Byrdsong in March 1997, then-Duke assistant Tommy Amaker openly lobbied for the job in a Chicago newspaper. Taylor went with the higher-profile O'Neill. Amaker later left for Seton Hall, where he took the Pirates to the Sweet 16 this past season and is building one of the nation's hottest programs. But would Amaker be attaining the same success had he landed at Northwestern? Not likely. Most of the top-notch recruits he's brought in would not pass admissions at NU. Sure, Gary Barnett achieved success in football, but a good football program can be built on bulks of linemen and QBs from refined suburban homes. There just aren't a lot of dazzling point guards or imposing power forwards walking around with 1,300 SATs. And the few that are, if dazzling or imposing enough, will choose a Duke or Stanford over Northwestern any day. Is any coach out there dynamic enough to reverse that trend? Maybe. But here's guessing he's already got a better job. -- Stewart Mandel is CNNSI.com college sports producer.
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