Few coaches are as entertaining to watch on the sidelines as Coach Carmody
Photo: NU Athletic Communications
There’s no one I’d rather have coaching men’s basketball at NU than Bill Carmody. Coach Carmody has been a controversial figure over the years (there is a basketball blog whose name is dedicated to his firing), but the bottom line is that he’s the winningest coach in Northwestern’s sad basketball history.
He’s also tremendously entertaining. Carmody is refreshingly honest about Northwestern basketball, and his press conferences are things of beauty. Before Kyle Rowley’s freshman year, he said that Rowley would be a good player if he’d just stop being so lazy. “He’s got a little Caribbean culture in there, so I’ve got to make sure the guy’s a consistently hard worker,” Carmody said. “A little laid-back.”
This year when talking about now-graduated guard Craig Moore, Carmody delivered this gem:
“He thought he was good. He thought he was as good as anybody he played against, and that’s important. You don’t have to be cocky, but you have to be convinced that you belong out there. He probably thought that he was better than he was, but that made him good.”
As we all know, Northwestern men’s basketball has never made the NCAA tournament…but that’s changing this year, and it’ll be partially because of Coach Carmody.
As someone who has been around the basketball team a lot, whether it be on flights to Brown and Stanford for WNUR Sports or just going to practice and talking with the players; I can attest that they love playing for Coach Carmody. That’s half the battle when it comes to coaching. If you can get the players to buy into what you’re preaching, you’re already a good coach. But for Coach Carmody, his success as a coach goes beyond mere likability.
He’s considered by his coaching peers to be one of the true offensive geniuses in all of college basketball. A protégé of legendary Princeton coach Pete Carril, Carmody’s “Princeton Offense” is one of the great talent-equalizers in any sport. The offense relies on precision passing, perfectly timed screens, and the ability to hit the three-point shot. It’s not a simple offense, which is probably why it originated at Princeton, but it has the ability to confuse other teams, and cause easy shots to be there via the “backdoor cut” that otherwise would not be open.
Where Coach Carmody has often been criticized during his time in Evanston (now entering its 10th year) has been in the area of recruiting. But you have to realize what he’s going up against…and that’s a pathetic history so bad that it makes Northwestern’s football history look sparkling.
But the hiring of former NU player Tavaras Hardy has changed the recruiting issues. Hardy is really hitting Chicago and the south hard, and NU already has a 4-star recruit coming next year, something unheard of in Evanston during the Rivals.com recruit-rating era. Add to that the impressive haul that helped boost NU into the NIT last year, and the impressive two-man class featuring three-star stud Drew Crawford, and all of a sudden the future of NU hoops looks very, very bright.
Coach Carmody has the talent assembled to make NU a Cinderella story this year. The question is…can they dance? I think the answer is yes.
