A 2020-21 Northwestern Women's Basketball Preview?
Damn, when did Forget the Protocol become Inside NU Lite? I graduated college 18 months ago, and BenG graduated 5+ years ago. Well, who cares…as they say, idle hands are Larry Scott’s plaything.
Not being able to watch Northwestern women’s basketball in the 2020 NCAA Tournament will bother me for the rest of my life. Of all the many, many sports annoyances of the COVID-19 pandemic, that is chief among them. They are, of course, merely annoyances, and the slowing of the spread in that first few months before any treatments were developed certainly saved thousands of lives. And yet, as we’ve all come to realize, the annoyances and “trivial” departures from daily life start to stack up, and we’re now heading into another daunting season with the pandemic raging around a broken, ineffectual country. We all know that unpaid athletes playing nationwide sports is absurd and likely going to be analyzed as some kind of sick joke by future historians. And yet, we are here. Again. Sigh. I don’t even know why I started writing this, I just started writing this as a way to not be stressed for two hours.
Once upon a time, Northwestern was 26-4 and the 11th best team in the country. They were going to host a game of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1993. Outside a very strange loss to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament, everything had been going their way for the last three months. They put Brenda Freese into the ground. They crushed most of the Big Ten. Lindsey Pulliam was one of the best scorers in the country. Abbie Wolf had become the defensive center that the McKeown system needed. Veronica Burton was the Defensive Player of the Year. Abi Scheid couldn’t miss. Joe McKeown even got over his Penn State allergy and ran away with two blowout wins.
American sports are rightly criticized for putting way too much emphasis on the postseason instead of the regular season, but the shocking removal of that postseason was far, far more depressing than if they’d never had one at all. Northwestern’s run from unranked and unappreciated 2019 WNIT finalists was one of the great Northwestern sports stories ever.
Not getting their moment in the sun was rather infuriating for longtime fans like me, but there was a grim understanding. Look, I know a Northwestern fan complaining about crowds is like a coal miner complaining about dust, but please allow me to get on my soapbox anyway. I don’t need to go into an explanation of systemic sexism and why women’s sports don’t get as much coverage as men’s sports, but at Northwestern, a school where sports are already somewhat degraded, the women’s basketball team is even more underappreciated than at places like Iowa, Maryland, or Nebraska. And we’re better at basketball than them! It was awesome to see them get some fan momentum heading into the end of the season, and I have little doubt that the Tournament games would’ve been great, but they had a top 10 team in the country and were still last in the Big Ten in attendance (please don’t give me any bullshit about how Northwestern is a small school, the average attendance would’ve barely cracked the top ten for Division II). They don’t get much national coverage either, and it’s to the entire program’s credit that they’ve managed to get where they are, especially considering how dire things looked in 2017-2018. Of course, any fan support that could’ve grown up this year is out of the question, so we’re left with some more frustration there. Bah humbug, watch the games on TV, bring your own juice, etc.
Well, if there are any lessons to learn from this miserable year, it’s that we just gotta keep trying. And Northwestern will be hellbent on trying. However, things will not be the same as last year. There are legitimate expectations, a No. 17 preseason ranking in the AP Poll, national awards attention for its players, and, you know, the global pandemic.
I am not as well-attuned to the ins and outs of the team anymore, but I know enough to definitively say that there’s enough talent on this team to win the Big Ten. Lindsey Pulliam and Veronica Burton are enough to get any team far, and there’s plenty of talent up and down the roster. That being said, I’d feel uncomfortable saying there’s as much talent as last year. Scheid was a critical second scorer and an invaluable leadership presence. Senior year Abbie Wolf really was the perfect center for the not entirely explicable yet effective McKeown system. Sadly, they’ve also freed Byrdy Galernik, who has now graduated.
Sydney Wood will slot in somewhere as a defensive ace with limited offensive upside; she’s the type of role player that McKeown’s teams desperately need. Courtney Shaw will start the season in the starting lineup and get an increased role after showing very reliable skills on the boards and at the rim.
With four starting spots reasonably assured, that leaves one crucial spot. It’s pretty clear that replacing Scheid will be the toughest test for the team this season and likely define whether they are merely a decent Big Ten team or a Contender. How do you replace the best three-point shooter in the country? Well, that’s the rub. Scheid’s role as a sharpshooting four was critical in spacing the floor, so they’ll need someone who can keep defenses honest while also showing enough defensive skill to keep up Northwestern’s lockdown zone.
There isn’t really a good answer here, hence my reservations on whether this team is quite as talented on paper, but we’ll likely see Jordan Hamilton with a 60% of the minutes split, depending on how the coaching staff wants to play it. Hamilton is the best remaining offensive player and will almost certainly begin the year in the starting lineup due to her ability to replace Scheid’s offense. However, that does leave Northwestern with an undersized lineup, and Hamilton wasn’t close to her offensive performance in her sophomore year. She really needs to shoot as she did in her first year (36.5% from three) for this team to reach its potential. If not, you could see junior Laya Hartman coming in early off the bench as a defensive replacement and have Hamilton shift to leading the second unit. But that’s all conjecture.
There are also reinforcements. Kate Popovec is the best recruiter Northwestern has ever had, and while the full rewards aren’t going to come until 2021, they’ll be able to immediately plug in a top 50, five-star frontcourt recruit in Anna Morris. However, it often takes a while for frontcourt players to adjust at Northwestern, so we’ll see how it goes. The talent is definitely there, and you could eventually see a split in first-team minutes with Courtney Shaw at some point. First-year shooting guard Jasmine McWilliams is an unknown quantity, but she will likely see the floor off the bench based on her defensive ability and rebounding alone (McKeown and his staff are savant-like with developing defensive role players, so she’s probably going to be a useful piece early).
This is typically where you talk about coaching, but Joe McKeown will be entering his 13th year as Northwestern’s head coach, so I’m not sure there’s much else to add. After enduring at Northwestern between 2016-2018 during the most difficult time of his entire career, it’s fair to say that he’s likely to retire here. Northwestern will try to force as many turnovers as possible to get high-percentage looks in transition. They will play a tough zone that forces opposing teams to make plays. The halfcourt offense will occasionally make me ill, but that’s okay. His coaching staff is good at their jobs and will be getting offers from other Division I schools before long. At this point, it’s safe to say that McKeown, age 64, is here to enjoy the ride as much as we are.
Finally, we have to talk about the virus once again. The 20-game Big Ten schedule got released yesterday, and we’ve already seen football games get canceled left and right due to Covid. Given that there is zero federal response and a vaccine is still months away from widespread distribution, there will be disruptions to this season at some point. I’m sure Northwestern is taking every available measure (cynically, I’m also inclined to believe that the athletics program is far better prepared with safety protocols than the rest of the student body) to ensure safety, but the spread in the Big Ten states is too great for any system to survive. So, who knows, I hope everyone stays safe, but every moment I watch of this season will be clouded by the knowledge that not everyone will be safe. Uh, go ‘Cats, as they say?
