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You already know about the first. It's Louisville forward Jared Swopshire, who transferred out of Rick Pitino's program this spring in search of more playing time -- a scarce quantity in a frontcourt that already includes Chane Behanan, Gorgui Dieng, Wayne Blackshear, and a mix of talented reserves.

Swopshire found that playing time at Northwestern, where he'll immediately raise the level of athleticism in the Wildcats' program. And his transfer comes at a perfect time, as coach Bill Carmody searches for frontcourt talent to replace leading scorer John Shurna.

Northwestern also announced the signing of 7-foot center Alex Olah Wednesday. Olah originally hails from Romania, and though he isn't an ESPN top 100 talent by any stretch, his CV does come with some rather impressive notches: He averaged 18.5 points, 13.1 rebounds and 4.6 blocked shots per game as a senior at Traders Point Christian Academy in Zionsville, Ind., and he put up 16.7 points, 14.0 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game in the 2011 FIBA U18 European Championships.

Those numbers are almost surely inflated by the competition -- you can watch (hilariously edited) YouTube videos and decide for yourself -- but there's at least an outside chance Olah can enter Evanston, Ill. and contribute immediately. At the very least, he has size. If there's any quality the Wildcats need, it's size. Northwestern was one of the worst rebounding teams in the country in 2012; per KenPom.com, they ranked No. 319 in offensive rebounding rate and No. 327 on the defensive end. Time and again, the Wildcats -- who started John Shurna at forward and the let's-be-polite-and-say-not-very-good Luka Mirkovic at center -- were manhandled in the paint by bigger, stronger, and just plain taller Big Ten foes.

Shurna was an excellent player, an efficient, lanky shooter perfect for Carmody's Princeton style. But he simply couldn't compete on the boards. Swopshire can. Olah is a mystery, but at least he stands 7-feet (and appears, judging by the videos, to have some ball skills to go with the size). And at least the Wildcats, forever in pursuit of that elusive first tournament berth, will bring something on the interior.

So: Is 2013 the year? In this Big Ten, probably not. But the Wildcats' chances look considerably better today than they did just a few weeks ago.

1. Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton has no interest in the Illinois job, according to a source with direct knowledge of his plans. Hamilton declined to publicly comment. The source said Hamilton wants to stay at Florida State where he believes he will have a better team in 2013 than he had when he won the ACC tournament in 2012. The Seminoles, which lost to Cincinnati in the third round of the NCAA tournament, do lose key seniors Xavier Gibson, Luke Loucks, Deividas Dulkys and Bernard James. But the return of Michael Snaer and Ian Miller will secure the backcourt. Still Hamilton is firmly committed to staying at FSU where he has said he can finish his career in Tallahassee.

2. Butler coach Brad Stevens is enjoying the CBI and anticipates a semifinal matchup against Pitt that would be likened to an NCAA tournament game. “Pitt is healthy right now and playing well,’’ Stevens said Tuesday night. Stevens, who coached in consecutive national title games, said the CBI has done wonders for his team. “I look out on the court and see three freshmen and six guys in our top eight who are freshmen and sophomores,’’ Stevens said. “That’s why we’re not in the NCAA tournament. But we’re getting better and growing.’’ Still, it’s not easy for Stevens to watch the NCAAs. “It’s really hard,’’ Stevens said. “It’s never easy to watch.’’

3. A number of sources close to Northwestern’s Bill Carmody have wondered throughout the year if Carmody would return after the exhaustion of trying to get the Wildcats to the NCAAs. Still, the Wildcats have improved dramatically under Carmody and are always competitive. If he were to resign then the Wildcats would have to look at Duke associate coach Chris Collins, who is from Northbrook, Ill. Collins is ready to make a break from Duke and would do wonders back in his hometown.

1. UCLA might not be a high postseason selection. So now that the Bruins are out, athletic director Dan Guerrero must either make a commitment to Ben Howland or move on after the season. He left Howland’s situation too open-ended last week. He needs to make a declarative statement, the way Pat Haden did at USC, telling the Los Angeles Times that Kevin O’Neill will be back. If Howland is going to return, Guerrero must make that clear.

2. Decisions should be made soon at Illinois and Nebraska. Bruce Weber is fully expecting there to be a change, but he’ll pocket $3.9 million. Doc Sadler isn’t so sure — but he would earn $3.4 million if he’s cut loose. It’s not even close as to which Big Ten job is better. Both schools have resources, but Illinois is always committed to hoops. Weber and Sadler are both well-liked by their peers and didn’t suddenly become poor coaches. Expect both to be gobbled up quickly in some form or fashion (head or assistant coaches) if they are officially ousted. Weber is almost a certainty but it’s too hard to have a read on Sadler at this juncture.

3. The pained expression on Bill Carmody’s face Thursday after the overtime loss to Minnesota spoke volumes about his tenure at Northwestern. Carmody has been so close to getting an NCAA bid, but yet so far. The Wildcats have had plenty of chances to win key games, but consistently fail. There really are no excuses, no one to blame and no one to debate. Northwestern hasn’t been snubbed. It has had a multitude of opportunities to get a bid but simply hasn't closed when needed. The drought will continue. This is actually worse than the Cubs, since the odds should favor Northwestern getting an NCAA bid over the Cubs winning the World Series.

INDIANAPOLIS -- On Thursday night, the Northwestern Wildcats didn’t talk like an NCAA tournament team. They didn’t look like one, either.

Somewhere within the vicinity of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse, the NCAA selection committee will finalize its bracket in the coming days. And the Wildcats should not be included.

They had their chance to impress and they squandered it.

“I don't know. Hopefully, I won't be disappointed on Sunday,” said Northwestern star John Shurna. “But I guess we'll just have to wait and see. We'll be playing next week, and we like to compete no matter who we're playing against.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a sucker for good storylines, too.

Northwestern fans around the world will celebrate the program’s first-ever bid if it happens. The buildup to NCAA tournament No. 1 will consume all of Evanston, Ill. The players within the program certainly put in the work to position themselves for a shot at history leading up to the Big Ten tournament.

But decisions have to be made without consideration of TV story packages. The selection process should answer only one question: Who’s earned it?

And the Wildcats had to do more in Indianapolis to prove that they’d earned a ticket. Instead, they lost to Minnesota for the second time this season.

They led 61-57 with three minutes to play. But they missed three shots and committed two crucial turnovers in the final minutes of regulation. They then lost 75-68 in overtime.

I am not biased toward any particular program. But I do believe the best should earn bids.

And it’s hard to see how that team -- which had to make a statement following an 8-10 record in Big Ten play and a 1-10 record against the RPI’s Top 50 -- gets into the field of 68 after that performance Thursday.

Minnesota freshman Andre Hollins, who averages 6.7 ppg, scored 25 against the Wildcats. That was the sort of clutch performance that would have made more sense for a Northwestern player based on the circumstances. But Northwestern fumbled down the stretch.

In my opinion, the Wildcats got an F on the eye test against the Gophers. They had something to prove and didn’t play like they knew it in crucial stretches.

They didn’t execute like a tournament team desperate for résumé-boosting victories.

This is not just about Northwestern. This is about the entire field.

This is about Drexel, a team that's lost two games since early December. This is about Tennessee, a team that’s won eight out of nine. This is about competition.

Teams deserve credit for their full body of work. Northwestern’s portfolio put the Wildcats in a pool of schools with similar arguments for NCAA tournament invites.

But if the selection committee aims to create the most competitive bracket, then it should rewatch NU’s effort Thursday night. It warrants scrutiny.

Every “must-have” performance within the bubblesphere does.

I watched the Northwestern-Minnesota game from press row at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. And I did not see a team that belonged in the Big Dance.

Perhaps the selection committee has already penciled in the Wildcats as a tournament team. Well, that’s why we have erasers.

This is a great story. And it’s easy to root for a Northwestern team that has never participated in the NCAA tournament. History can be quite cruel.

But that shouldn’t factor into the decision to say yea or nay to the Wildcats on Selection Sunday.

They were presented with an opportunity to make a statement on national TV on Thursday. And the Wildcats ultimately offered an argument against their first bid.

“I'm still here. It's hard. It's disappointing, tough … but, you know, you come back,” Northwestern coach Bill Carmody said after the game.

Northwestern’s resilience has been well-documented in recent years. The Wildcats have approached NCAA tournament status in the past. But players admit they’ve never felt this close to a bid.

That determination is commendable. The annual conversation about if “this is Northwestern’s year” is a familiar one for fans of any program that’s struggled year after year.

But this can’t be about sympathy. It has to be about quality.

And that means Northwestern -- just 8-12 since mid-December -- is an NIT team.

That might not seem fair to Northwestern or its supporters. But it’s fair to the game and it’s fair to other teams that will prove their worth in the coming days, something the Wildcats didn’t do in their brief stay in the Big Ten tournament.

Believe it or not, a certain massive matchup in Durham, N.C., isn't the only college hoops game on the schedule today. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

Here's a look at much of the action -- bubble and otherwise -- that served as the appetizer to tonight's main course. Be sure to check back later this evening for our writers' reactions and analysis from across the country.

No. 7 Marquette 83, No. 12 Georgetown 69: When March calms down, and the offseason finishes out its usual assortment of draft decisions, coaching intrigue and off-campus arrests (and everything else), I'm going to sit down one week and calculate college hoops winning percentages on senior night. With the exception of Northwestern (which lost in heartbreaking fashion Wednesday), it felt like nearly every team in the country won its final home game of the season this week. A lot of that is just good, old-fashioned home-court advantage, and some of it is skill and so forth, but when you strip all that away, I'm still going to guess pretty much every college hoops team in the country sees a massive bounce in its winning in the final home game of the season. Quantifying emotion is never easy. This feels like a chance.

In any case, Marquette followed this (presumably real, potentially imagined) trend Saturday, easily handling a Georgetown team that was itself coming off a dominant performance in its final home game of the season, a 59-41 victory over Notre Dame. In doing so, the Golden Eagles extended their Big East record to 14-4 and ensured the No. 2 seed in the Big East tournament next week. Meanwhile, Jae Crowder made one last-ditch pitch for Big East player of the year: He scored 26 points and grabbed 14 rebounds on 8-of-15 from the field and 10-of-12 from the free throw line. (Crowder missed all five 3-point attempts, a portion of his game that he's really improved this season. When your center can shoot 37 percent from 3-point range, you've got a very difficult team to guard.)

Can Crowder win the award? Because he should. With all due respect to Darius Johnson-Odom and like four or five different Syracuse players, Crowder's mix of offensive efficiency (offensive rating: 122.9; including 61 percent from inside the arc, a low turnover rate, and the aforementioned perimeter solidity), rebounding and defense (he's averaging 2.3 steals and 1.0 blocks per game) make him, to me, the most complete, most important player in the conference.

No. 9 Murray State 54, Tennessee State 52 (Ohio Valley Championship): With six minutes left in the OVC title game, bubble teams across the country were no doubt finding it difficult to establish regulated breathing patterns. Tennessee State was up 48-43, the Racers were struggling to find stops against the dish-and-kick action of the Tigers' 1-4 low sets, and even worse, Isaiah Canaan, Murray State's do-it-all star, was battling through an off night. A two-bid OVC -- and a suddenly shrunken bubble -- were very real possibilities.

But Murray State locked in on defense, stacking great possession after great possession, cutting the Tigers off and preventing easy shots in the paint, and eventually came back to seal the win. The final go-ahead basket was a matter of immediate controversy at the broadcast table; our own Fran Fraschilla was convinced Murray State guard Jewuan Long charged on his game-winning basket. The call was close, no question. But all due respect to Fran, who is way better than this than I am, I disagree that it should have been a charge. A few things here. Long shot the ball before contact was initiated; the defender was still slightly sliding under the move, rather than entirely in front of it; and, most importantly, it was the penultimate play of a one-possession game with the NCAA tournament on the line. The ref needs to swallow his whistle there. And, in general, college coaches and players -- frankly, this applies to the NBA, too -- need to stop coaching defense like this! It's bad for the sport. There are plenty of ways to defend a driving player without fouling or attempt to draw a foul. Choose one. Don't run to a spot and hope the ref gives you the benefit of a 50-50 call, especially when your season is on the line. In short: Play defense.

Maybe that's the pickup player in me coming out; I would have little sympathy even if Long committed a blatant charge. But it wasn't. The no-call couldn't have been more appropriate. And every bubble team in the country can breathe just a little bit easier as a result.

Illinois State 65, No. 14 Wichita State 64: On second thought, bubble teams, you can go back to freaking out now. Why? Because Arch Madness has yielded its first truly mad result of the tournament. Wichita State is the Missouri Valley's best team and No. 1 overall seed, not to mention everyone's pick to be this year's mid-major tournament darling. But that didn't stop the Redbirds -- thanks to Tyler Brown's two clutch free throws and two misses in the last six seconds from WSU's Toure' Murry and Garrett Stutz -- from shocking the Shockers all the same. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Wichita State doesn't have much to worry about in the way of its NCAA tournament seed, of course. But every team along the bubble line, including many of those mentioned below, should be terrified. If Creighton suffers the same fate at any point this weekend, the Missouri Valley will send three teams to the NCAA tournament and steal one bid from a bubble that is destined to shrink even further down the stretch.

Could that third team be Illinois State? Why not? When you beat Wichita State on a neutral court, you deserve the benefit of the doubt.

No. 2 Syracuse 58, No. 18 Louisville 49: This was always an uphill battle for Louisville for one obvious reason: The Cardinals can't score. Louisville can defend. It can rebound. It can get stops when it needs them. But when you have the Big East's 11th-best offense on a per-possession basis, when your effective field-goal percentage ranks outside the nation's top 200 teams, when you turn the ball over on 21.8 percent of your possessions (national rank: No. 241) and your task is to break down Syracuse's smothering 2-3 defense in the Carrier Dome, well, good luck. Syracuse played its typically potent brand of extended defense, forcing Louisville a downright awful 2-of-23 mark from beyond the arc, and that's pretty much your game right there.

It's going to be interesting to see how Rick Pitino tries to adjust this team as he heads toward the NCAA tournament. A few weeks ago, Pitino told ESPN Radio's Scott Van Pelt that he liked to speed the game up and take more risks in the tournament; in his experience, too many coaches slow down in the tournament, fearing disorganization and disarray. This might be his only course of action in March. The Cardinals can't find any offense, but they can press and trap and slap and claw and hope to get easy buckets from turnovers and bad shots in transition. At this point, with this anemic, predictable offense (prediction: Peyton Siva won't see a defense guard him over the top on another ball screen all season), does Pitino have any other choice?

Variously Questionable Bubble Losses

West Virginia 50, South Florida 44: The Mountaineers desperately needed this win. Before this week's victory over DePaul, WVU had lost seven of its previous nine games and seen its once-certain at-large tournament bid -- WVU was once a No. 5 seed in Joe Lunardi's bracket; now it's a No. 12 -- become an entirely precarious matter. This win obviously helps, and not just because it was a win: It also put a ding on one of WVU's potential bubble rivals, South Florida, which has surged into the bubble conversation in recent weeks thanks to a gaudy Big East record and consecutive victories over Cincinnati and Louisville. A win Saturday might have put the Bulls on the right side of the bubble in official fashion. As it is, their profile still looks much better than it used to, but with a 5-10 road record and a 2-8 mark against the RPI top 50, some positive results in the Big East tournament may well be necessary.

UCLA 75, Washington 69: First things first: This was a really nice win for UCLA. It hasn't been the easiest week for the Bruins (that's a candidate for understatement of the year), but with back-to-back good wins (a blowout of Washington State and this plucky victory over the league's standings leader) at least they finished on a positive note. As for Washington, the loss might well have cost the Huskies the outright Pac-12 title. Cal still needs to win get a likely but hardly guaranteed win at Stanford, but either way, the Huskies' argument -- that an outright regular-season conference title in a high-major, albeit really bad, conference should guarantee a spot in the NCAA tournament -- looks even more specious now. Washington, like the rest of this league, has nothing in the way of nonconference results to point to as proof that it is considerably better than the RPI's impression of the Pac-12 as the 10th-best league in the country. It will be fascinating to see how the committee treats UW, and the Pac-12 as a whole, but if I'm the Huskies I'm planning on making a very deep run through the Pac-12 tournament, just to be safe.

Marshall 79, Southern Miss 75: Will a loss at Marshall damage Southern Miss's bubble chances? Doubtful. Marshall is a quality team -- a deep fringe bubble candidate in its own right -- and a four-point loss in the Herd's building isn't, or shouldn't, be the kind of thing that damages a team's bubble chances. What's more, the Golden Eagles still own an RPI within the top 20. In the past 16 years, no team with an RPI of 20 higher has ever missed the tournament. (The closest was 2005-06 Missouri State, which didn't have nearly as strong a profile as this team.) They should be fine.

Maintenance-Minded Bubble Wins

Xavier 72, Charlotte 63: Xavier's final home win of the season wasn't what the Musketeers would have planned heading into the season. To wit, from the AP: "It was a bittersweet day for Xavier, which had grown accustomed to ending its final home game with a spray of confetti and a few celebratory snips of the net. The Musketeers' streak of five straight A-10 regular-season titles was snapped this season." That dream was over weeks ago. Xavier has bigger fish to slice now. The Musketeers are as close to the bubble as you can be (Lunardi's most recent bracket has them as the first team outside the field). A win won't necessarily change that, but a loss would have been disastrous, and Xavier is now in at least slightly better position as it heads into A-10 postseason play.

Northwestern 70, Iowa 66: It was very easy to imagine Northwestern -- which missed marquee wins (Michigan, Ohio State) in soul-crushing fashion twice in the past two weeks -- losing at Iowa. The Hawkeyes beat Wisconsin and Indiana at home in recent weeks, Northwestern would no doubt be feeling the historic tournament pressure, and so on. But this was an impressive victory, or at least as impressive as a victory over Iowa can ever be. This is a little like Xavier's win: It doesn't provide a bubble bump, but it does prevent a potentially disastrous move in the wrong direction at the worst possible time of the season. Is Northwestern in right now? I'd guess yes. But it's hardly a done deal. Like nearly everyone else on the bubble, the only way for Bill Carmody's team to enter Selection Sunday with any measure of confidence is to play well in next week's conference tournament. That much is clear.

Miami 77, Boston College 56: Same situation here: A loss would have been a dream-killer. A win doesn't move the needle. Miami basically has two tourney-worthy qualities on its profile: A win at Duke (huge) and a home win over Florida State (slightly less huge, but still important). But other than that, there's not much there. Can the Hurricanes knock off one of this league's top four teams -- especially Duke or UNC -- on a neutral floor next week? That might be the baseline requirement going forward.

Connecticut 74, Pittsburgh 65: The Huskies have spent much of the past three weeks looking downright determined to overcome their computer numbers (a top-five overall strength of schedule and a top-20 nonconference figure) and somehow, some way, miss the tournament. This week's loss to Providence was an apparent punctuation mark on a pretty much horrible Big East season, or at least horrible relative to this team's elite talent. After this win, though, it looks like UConn will -- just barely -- hold on to a spot above the bubble fray.

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Was it too much to ask?

Was it too much to hope that just one time -- this time -- would be Northwestern's turn as fate's chosen beneficiary? Was it too much to think that maybe, despite all the reasons to believe the contrary, the Wildcats might just catch a break? Could Northwestern fans, besieged constantly by reminders of their program's historic futility, finally feel the freedom of belief?

The short answer? No.

"It's very tough," Northwestern guard Drew Crawford said.

"Disappointing," forward John Shurna said. "Kind of a tough way to go out."

Wednesday night was Shurna's senior night, an honor he shared with Davide Curletti, Nick Fruendt and Luka Mirkovic. Shurna & Co. are the school's all-time winningest class, one that also set a school record with three consecutive postseason appearances.

Of course, none of those postseasons has been of the NCAA tournament variety, which is why Wednesday night's game was so much more than a disappointing loss, so much more than an emotional senior night spoiled by a 75-73 defeat.

Indeed, the game against Ohio State was one of the biggest in Northwestern's history. That title is fresh, because we said the same exact thing in the wake of Feb. 21's home loss to Michigan. And we could say the same again Saturday, when Northwestern travels to Iowa to play its regular-season finale. At this point, every game Northwestern plays is abnormally important for reasons that go beyond conference record or pride or graduating seniors or even a one-year bubble scenario.

Why? You know why: The Wildcats are still searching for their first-ever NCAA tournament bid. This is the only team in a major conference to never visit the NCAA tournament. You have heard about this ignominious distinction more than a few times in the past few weeks (and months and years) because it's impossible to talk about this program without dwelling on its unique, defining story of woe.

Wednesday night was merely another page in that book. At first, the action looked predictable enough. After a quick six minutes of dominant interior play and hot shooting, a focused and freewheeling Ohio State team -- one that looked vastly different from the weekend's home loss to Wisconsin -- had opened an 18-8 lead. By the five-minute mark, the lead was 30-18.

Just before the half, it was all the way up to 39-26, before Shurna made a 3 to cut the deficit to 10, but no matter. Clearly, the Buckeyes were in control.

Ohio State was moving the ball seamlessly against Northwestern's zone, using skip passes and penetration to find easy first looks. Better yet, when the first looks didn't drop, OSU forwards Jared Sullinger and Deshaun Thomas pounced. Together, they combined for 15 offensive rebounds (and 28 total) and carried the Bucks to an eye-popping offensive rebounding percentage of 62.5 percent.

Northwestern -- for which Shurna, who shoots nearly as many 3s as 2s, counts as an interior player, and a team that plays 6-foot-1 guard David Sobolewski in the baseline of its 1-3-1 zone -- had nothing remotely close to an answer.

"They destroyed us on the backboards," Northwestern coach Bill Carmody said.

His team's only answer was hope: hope that enough 3s went down to stay within striking distance, hope that Ohio State caught a few bad bounces, hope that the game was just close enough to steal in the end. Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. The Wildcats gradually cut OSU's lead throughout the second half, first to six, then to five, then to four.

And although Ohio State seemed to have an answer each and every time -- an Aaron Craft 3 here, a Sullinger putback there -- the Cats, led by Shurna and a 13-of-27 mark from 3, and aided by said bad bounces (and a huge JerShon Cobb steal), found themselves down by three. With the ball. With 16 seconds to play.

You've probably already seen what happened next. Guard Alex Marcotullio, against the advice of his better angels, launched what felt like a 30-foot 3. Like all great last-second shots, it seemed to hang in the air forever before splashing through the net and sending Welsh-Ryan Arena into convulsions of euphoria and disbelief.

The only problem: There still were 7 seconds on the scoreboard and Thad Matta called a timeout, and before you could realize it -- before Welsh-Ryan could process what was happening -- Craft was sprinting down the court and heaving the ball ahead to Sullinger, who had established the perfect position to quickly turn and score with his right hand, and now there's 3 seconds left, and Shurna is hoisting a half-court shot that hits the front of the rim and misses, and ... wait. What just happened?

A cynical fan -- or an out-and-out jerk -- probably would say Northwestern happened. This is what Northwestern does, especially in recent seasons. It takes its fans to the brink, to the point of ecstatic belief, before revealing some fresh new horror.

Frankly, if the aforementioned cynic said this to you, it'd be pretty difficult to disagree.

But while the short answer above might have been "no," it was impossible to talk to Crawford and Shurna after the game and not sense some lack of emotional weight. Both were positive, even upbeat, or at least as upbeat as a human being can be after what they had just seen. (Before shooting the above video, I cursorily asked Shurna, "How's it going?" His response: "Ha. I've been better." Note to self: Never use that phrase on a dreary Monday morning again.)

"Obviously it's tough," Crawford said, "but we played great down toward the end of the game, and we're all proud of our team. I think we're a resilient bunch, and we'll be ready to go on Saturday."

Maybe Shurna and Crawford are used to all the will-they-or-won't-they talk by now. Maybe they've chosen to ignore it. It was surely no surprise that every question, press-room murmur and speculative amateur bracketologism Wednesday night dwelled on whether this team would be the one to finally, mercifully end college basketball's most infamous streak.

It was the first question Matta faced when he sat down for his postgame news conference: Is Northwestern a tournament team?

"Yeah," Matta said. "Oh yeah. ... I know this. I would hate on Selection Sunday to have Northwestern come across, to have to play them."

Shurna was quizzed about how, with so much pressure and bubble speculation compounding in the final week of the season, his team could rebound. ("Gotta win," he said.) Crawford was asked whether Wednesday's loss "proved" anything to the selection committee about Northwestern's makeup.

"I don't think a loss means too much," he said, flashing a better understanding of the selection process than his inquisitor.

The truth is, a loss doesn't mean much, if anything. The good news, however, is this: Other bubble teams lost Wednesday night, too, and in Joe Lunardi's most recent bracket update, the Wildcats were still listed as the last team in the tournament. Nothing is guaranteed, but in Northwestern's case, that's a good thing. The Cats might not be safely in the tournament, the way they would have been had Shurna's final prayer been answered, had Matta and and Craft and Sullinger not so ruthlessly executed their final four-second game winner. But this group isn't obviously out of the field, either.

"Had we won the game, it would have been a great win for us," Crawford said. "But that's not really going to keep us down at all. We're excited to finish this season strong. And it starts in practice tomorrow."

And so another five days -- or 11 days -- of bubble speculation will continue. Can this star-crossed program get it done? Can Shurna go out on something more than disappointment? Can Northwestern fans, against all reason and rationale and evidence to the contrary, dare to believe?

The short answer, at least Wednesday night, was no.

But the long answer? Let's wait and see.

Click here to read our afternoon recap. Now back to the lecture at hand, which comes in three parts:

The Rivalry

No. 2 Syracuse 71, Connecticut 69: One of the many things to love about this Syracuse team -- besides its great zone defense and incredible depth and talent and length and pretty much everything besides defensive rebounding -- is how well it handles close games. Since the Jan. 21 loss at Notre Dame, Syracuse has taken respective best shots from Cincinnati, West Virginia, Georgetown, Louisville, South Florida and now at UConn, and each time the Orange have either pulled away late or made the key stop down the stretch to preserve the narrow win. It's a real skill, and it isn't entirely intangible; when you have a defense this good, you tend to get a lot of stops, and there's no reason why that wouldn't be true in the final minutes of any given game, too. But however you quantify it, the Orange win close games. Such traits tend to come in handy in March.

As for Connecticut? While the Huskies didn't get the win, they appear to be rounding into form, or at least starting to figure a few things out. UConn had its fair share of issues with Syracuse's zone, and there were plenty of bad shots to be had, but the Huskies were much more balanced (four players finished in double figures, while Ryan Boatright and Shabazz Napier combined for 13 assists) and competent on both ends of the floor in the second half. Unless it suddenly begins shooting the ball from outside at a much higher clip, this team probably has a ceiling. But there are plenty of realistic improvements to be made. Even better, many of them appear to be in progress. Let's not bury this team just yet.

The Upsets

Purdue 75, No. 13 Michigan 61: When Purdue guard Ryne Smith was asked what he thought about guard Kelsey Barlow's dismissal from the team last week, he was direct, even curt: "Addition by subtraction," Smith said. Apparently he was right. Whatever the reason, Purdue played its best game of the season Saturday at the most important time, containing Michigan's outside shooters and slowly stretching a second-half lead thanks to the heady play of point guard Lewis Jackson, forward Robbie Hummel and, most importantly, guard Terone Johnson, who scored a career-high 22 points and made a handful of key plays down the stretch, including two big and-1 finishes around the rim. Purdue is an unconventional team with no true post presence; the Boilermakers rely on Hummel's outside-in versatility and an extended, guard-oriented style. This makes them a great matchup for Michigan, and, in their own way, a dangerous team.

In any case, Purdue can now feel entirely safe about its at-large NCAA tournament chances. Beating Michigan at home -- the Wolverines' first home loss of the season -- is most definitely a signature victory. And it couldn't have come at a better time.

TCU 83, No. 21 New Mexico 64: Let's hear it for TCU! A round of applause is most definitely in order. At this time in 2011, the Horned Frogs were in the midst of a season-ending 13-game losing streak, en route to an 11-22 finish. This season is an entirely different story: TCU is playing its best basketball down the stretch, having won four of its past five (and eight in a row at home) and toppling ranked UNLV and New Mexico and a good Colorado State squad in the process. The key: great 3-point shooting. The Horned Frogs lead the league in long-range makes in conference play, and they're undefeated at home as a result. What a difference a year makes.

In the meantime ... um, what happened to New Mexico? Last Saturday, we watched in near-awe as the Lobos thoroughly dominated UNLV, which came just a few days after a 10-point win at San Diego State. Steve Alford's team, once a relatively unheralded efficiency darling with few good wins to show for it, looked set to run away with the Mountain West and make a deep run into March. Since then, the Lobos are 0-2 and are now in a three-way tie. A loss at Colorado State makes some sense; we know the Rams are tough, particularly at home. And this is not to take away from TCU, which (as you just read above) is giving everyone more than they bargained for in February, particularly in their own building. But a 19-point blowout loss? Isn't this the team that just rolled UNLV in the Pit and moved to 8-2 in the league? It's kind of weird, right?

Georgia 76, No. 11 Florida 62: This is an upset, of course, but I'm not sure we should be all that surprised. Frankly, I'm not sure if a Florida loss should ever truly catch us off guard. Don't get me wrong: The Gators are good. But they're a specific kind of good. When their steady diet of 3s are falling, they can shoot opponents off the floor before said opponents even have a chance to catch their breath. But if the shots aren't going down, Florida has no Plan B. Patric Young is the only true post presence, and his offensive game is still a work in progress (and he's still underutilized as a scoring threat to boot). The Gators' defense -- which ranks fifth in opponents' points per possession in SEC play, No. 10 in opponents' 3-point field goal percentage and No. 10 in block rate -- still isn't good enough to hold opponents in check when the shots clanging off the iron and the opponents start turning long rebounds into secondary breaks and easy buckets. Florida might yet get there on the defensive end, but it isn't yet. If this UF team has a lower ceiling than it should, well, that's why.

The Bubble Specials

Alabama 67, Mississippi State 50: It was instinctively easy to write off the Crimson Tide when coach Anthony Grant suspended Tony Mitchell and JaMychal Green; it was easy to predict a late collapse, even a fall off the bubble, for a team whose two leading scorers would be missing such important games down the stretch. Instead, the Crimson Tide keep, well, rolling. They've now won three in a row and prevented any hint of a collapse. Mississippi State, on the other hand, appears to be doing exactly that: The Bulldogs are collapsing. This is the Bulldogs' fifth consecutive defeat, a stretch that has included some good basketball (in the near-miss vs. Kentucky this week) but also some baffling losses (the loss at Auburn especially). It's no stretch to say Mississippi State -- which for much of the season looked like a tourney near-lock -- could wind up missing the tournament after all. The Bulldogs are, after all, 6-8 and tied with rival Ole Miss in the SEC standings. Ouch.

Northwestern 67, Penn State 66: Breathe a big ol' sigh of relief, Northwestern fans: In the chase for their first NCAA tournament appearance in school history, the Wildcats remain very much alive. Senior forward John Shurna made the game-winning free throws with just 2.6 seconds remaining, giving Bill Carmody his first win in State College since 2002. Big challenges still lie ahead: Ohio State comes to town on Wednesday, followed by next weekend's season-ender at Iowa, a team that just knocked off Indiana and Wisconsin in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. But for now, some minor rejoicing is in order. Northwestern's tourney hopes are still very real.

Rutgers 77, Seton Hall 72 (OT): Let's not take Seton Hall off the bubble just yet, eh? The Pirates got a great win over Georgetown this week, one that could have firmed up a previously shaky at-large profile. All Seton Hall needed to do the rest of the way was avoid bad losses. Well, losing to a young, 13-16 Rutgers team at home is just that. Next weekend, the Hall travels to DePaul. If the Pirates lose there, all the good vibes from the emphatic Georgetown victory will have almost entirely faded from the picture.

VCU 89, George Mason 77: First things first: Thanks to Drexel's one-point win at Old Dominion on Saturday afternoon, VCU's win over George Mason won't give them a share of the CAA title this season. Bummer, sure, but the Rams would surely settle for a spot in the NCAA tournament, something to which they're at least a little closer after this victory today. As a league, the Colonial's top teams (Drexel, VCU and GMU) didn't get quality nonconference wins (VCU's best came against South Florida, for example), so any at-large consideration will have to come from separation at the top and perhaps a pair of deep runs for both Drexel and VCU in the CAA tournament. A win here was a must, and Shaka Smart's team got it, behind Bradford Burgess' career-high 31 points.

Dayton 76, UMass 43: A home loss to UMass can't be called "bad," but for a team like Dayton -- which is desperately scrapping for a spot in the NCAA tournament -- it could have been disastrous. Instead, the opposite happened: UD won, and won big, looking very much like one of the A-10's best teams and a squad worthy of a tourney bid in the process. We'll see how the Flyers finish up, but if they're one of the last four in, they might just be one of the play-in game candidates, which are held in -- you guessed it -- Dayton!

Saint Joseph's 82, No. 22 Temple 72: Speaking of somewhat fringe Atlantic 10 tournament hopefuls, the A-10 can't offer a bubble team a better shot at a marquee win than Temple on its own floor late in the season, but the Hawks still had to overcome Fran Dunphy's typically peerless bunch, which had won its previous 11 games and 13 in the 15-game stretch beginning with its Jan. 4 victory over Duke. Phil Martelli's team is now 9-6 in the league and 19-11 overall, and it added the one thing it desperately needed to its profile: A legitimate top-25 RPI win. Temple is most definitely that.

Penn 55, Harvard 54: Just when you think it's time to plan a long-awaited Harvard hoops coronation, Penn's Zack Rosen comes along, scores 20 points, makes a huge jumper down the stretch and ices two game-winning free throws in the final 30 seconds. And all of a sudden the Ivy League race is legitimately up for grabs with both of these teams having two losses. (Another one-game playoff for the Crimson? Oh boy.) As an at-large entity, Harvard is still in decent shape, but its profile isn't so strong that it can afford to lose at either Columbia or Cornell in its final two games, lose out on the Ivy auto-bid, and still feel safe about being picked to join the group of 37 at-large teams. Big days ahead for Tommy Amaker's team.

Washington 59, Washington State 55: For the first 10 or so minutes of the first half, it looked like Wazzu was going to hand its in-state opponent the type of loss that would severely damage Washington's at-large chances. But the Huskies fought back and, as the AP report notes, won the game's most important battle -- at the charity stripe: "Ultimately, the game came down to free throws. WSU (14-14, 6-10) went 11 of 12 to keep the game tied at 28-all despite shooting 27 percent in the first half. In the second half, the Cougars shot 6 of 20 from the free throw line, while the Huskies, who only went 2 of 5 in the first half, finished 17 of 24." The win keeps Washington on the right side of the bubble for now, but UW's marginal profile might not be able to survive a loss at either USC or UCLA going away.

Xavier 65, Richmond 57: Kenny Frease's season highs in both points (19) and rebounds (14) helped carry Xavier to an ugly but ultimately victorious Saturday. A loss here would have kicked Xavier off the bubble for good and almost certainly, barring an upset in the A-10 tournament, ended Chris Mack's 100 percent NCAA tournament hit rate in his XU tenure. Instead, the Musketeers live to fight another day.

No. 21 San Diego State 74, Colorado State 66: The Rams pass at least two NCAA tournament bubble tests: The RPI/SOS numbers are great, and they sure do look like a tournament team. But will that be enough? A win in Viejas Arena would have provided a tidy bookend to this week's huge victory over New Mexico, but the loss isn't a huge deal. Colorado State, which is undefeated at home in Mountain West play, hosts UNLV in Fort Collins in just three days' time. Win that one and the Rams are probably set.

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern senior Davide Curletti doesn’t know precisely when he stopped caring whether he started or how many points he scored in a given game, but it happened sometime during the past four years.

Part of that came with Curletti dealing with reality. Northwestern coach Bill Carmody has never seen him as a starter and his job for the Wildcats hasn’t been to contribute a double-double like he did as a high school senior. His role has been to be an energy player off the bench, or as Carmody puts it, “the Energizer Bunny.”

It’s not the most glamorous of roles, but then again, the 6-foot-9, 230-pound Curletti isn’t the most glamorous of players. He doesn’t outjump opponents for rebounds; he outworks them. He doesn’t outmaneuver defenders for buckets; he outthinks them.

Curletti has embraced that role and been consistent in it. He averaged 2.9 points, 1.7 rebounds and 0.9 rebounds in 11.9 minutes over 91 career games before Saturday, and his numbers this season hadn’t been much different. He averaged 3.7 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 16.8 minutes in his first 16 games.

So no one, not even Curletti, could have predicted his performance on Saturday. Making only the second start of his career, Curletti scored 17 points, grabbed six rebounds, dished out four assists, stole two balls and blocked one shot in 36 minutes while helping Northwestern to an 81-74 upset of No. 7 Michigan State.

Because Curletti has become such a team-first kind of guy throughout his career, he was even careful of how he accepted everyone’s praise on Saturday. Although inside he was feeling pretty good about himself, he made sure everyone knew he wanted the win to be about the team’s play, not his own.

“It’s not about trying to be cocky or anything like that, but it’s just that it feels really good and I’m glad it happened,” Curletti said. “Obviously, I hope it happens again, but at the same time you got to think beating the No. 7 team out-trumps all of that.

“Last year my best game was against Wisconsin where I had a similar game, but we lost. When someone asked me of my favorite game of my career, I said last year’s loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament. I later realized I didn’t even think about Wisconsin. Big wins do really matter in the long run.”

Curletti did confirm that Saturday’s game leaped that overtime loss to Ohio State and became his No. 1 career highlight. And of all the individual plays Saturday, Curletti will never forget his backdoor cut which led to a wide-open dunk to give Northwestern a 57-50 lead with 12:27 remaining. As he flushed the ball, Northwestern’s bench and nearly everyone wearing purple jumped off their seats at Welsh-Ryan Arena.

“It was great,” Curletti admitted. “It was really awesome.”

So how did Curletti go from being a career role player to a star in one of the program’s biggest wins? He claimed he did nothing different.

“It’s kind of like you work hard and some games you’ll get only one offensive rebound and you’ll get maybe two points, but other games, if you stick with it, you’ll have a night like this,” Curletti said. “For me, coming off the bench, you always have to have energy. That’s what I try to do. That’s kind of what my role was the last couple years, so that’s what I’m just going to keep on doing.

“I like working hard, and I consider myself a hard worker. I feel my best way of contributing on this team is to do that. You always need a guy like that on a team.”

You also need stars like Northwestern’s Drew Crawford and John Shurna, and those were the names rolling off Michigan State’s tongues leading up to Saturday’s game. Afterward, it was all about Curletti. Spartans coach Tom Izzo took a stab at pronouncing Curletti’s first name (DAH-vuh-day), but he got his last name perfect.

“Curletti was the difference in the game if you ask me,” said Izzo, who had been quite pleased with his big men prior to Saturday’s game. “He’s the one who snagged those [rebounds] when we had them, and he took them and scored on them. Curletti was a big difference in the game and deserved the play and credit he got. I thought it was a brilliant move by Bill to start him.”

Carmody’s brilliance actually was a last-second decision. He opted against starting a smaller lineup with Shurna at center and went with Curletti at the 5. Curletti’s one and only other start came against Ohio State as a freshman on Feb. 18, 2009. He finished with two rebounds on that day.

When Curletti discovered just before the game he was starting, he didn’t jump for joy. He understood he needed to play as he’s always played.

“To be honest, it didn’t really matter to me,” Curletti said. “It has been a while [since I started.] I’m also a senior now. I have to put the team ahead. I can’t be nervous. I have to play my game.”

And so he did.

Yesterday, in oh-so-quiet fashion, Bill Carmody inked a contract extension with the Northwestern Wildcats.

If you're a teensy bit confused by that proposition, well, you're not the only one. Northwestern fans aren't exactly thrilled, either.

First, the skinny. The Wildcats didn't reveal the terms of Carmody's deal -- Northwestern can do that, being a private institution and all -- but Carmody stressed the prefix "multi-" in describing the multiyear deal to reporters Monday. This is currently Carmody's 11th season at Northwestern, a tenure that has been marked by constant, if slight, improvement, quirky Princeton offense and 1-3-1 zone defense and, above all, a continuation of the Wildcats' eternal NCAA tournament drought. Carmody has gotten Northwestern competitive in recent years; the Wildcats have spent the past three offseasons surrounded by "Is this the year?" rumblings, and that's an improvement on the program's historical ineptitude. But he's yet to lead his team to the tourney.

For Northwestern fans, apparently, therein lies the rub. Sippin' On Purple's Rodger Sherman sums up the Wildcat hoops fan's feelings thusly:

I really like Bill Carmody: I think he's a good coach willing to try intriguing, new things, he understands his personnel for the most part, and with a few notable issues, he generally handles a very difficult situation - coaching a Big Ten team with no NCAA tournament experience - well.

I just can't shake thinking this is an awful decision though. People say they want to keep him under contract for recruiting, but, if I'm a recruit, and NU doesn't make the tournament this year, I'd rather see they're committed to finding somebody new, exciting, and capable than sticking with the guy who is 0-11 in tourney appearances. That the school, despite the bad history, cares, and that I could help out and be that player on that first NCAA team. I guess we'll have to hope those players want to instead commit to being players for Carmody years 12-16. The season isn't over, and great things could still happen. For Carmody's sake and NU's, I hope they do.

Judging by Twitter and message board chatter, Rodger's opinion seems to be the consensus among Northwestern fans. They like Carmody -- he's one of the smartest coaches in the Big Ten, after all -- and they like the signs of improvement in recent years. But they can't help feeling like it's time to move on.

They might be right. The easy view here is to say, well, hey, it's Northwestern, a team that has the words "4 NIT APPEARANCES" on a banner in Welsh-Ryan Arena. (Yes, this is true, and yes, it might be the saddest banner in college sports.) Is it really going to get much better than Carmody? The problem with that theory is, well, football. As Pat Fitzgerald (and other coaches before him) have showed, Northwestern athletics can be a winning enterprise at the highest levels of college athletics. It isn't doomed, whether by high academic standards or athletics expenditures, to fail forever. Carmody has frequently instilled that feeling among hoops fans, only to disappoint when his teams annually fail to notch tourney bids. Barring a major turnaround, this season is headed in that direction, too.

Is it the worst extension ever? Of course not. Is it poorly timed? Sure. Is it the best Northwestern can do? At the very least, you have to wonder.

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern's student section T-shirt slogan -- "Make Shots" -- isn't just dry-witted and cliché-free. It's also pretty solid basketball advice.

Fitting, then, that these Northwestern Wildcats have to follow it so closely. When John Shurna and company aren't draining 3-pointers from all angles -- when Shurna makes only one shot, singular -- they're going to struggle to score points against athletically superior teams.

Michigan State is one such team, and so it went at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Monday night. Northwestern -- one of the nation's best outside shooting teams with perhaps its best pure shooter in Shurna -- shot 31 percent (18-of-57 from the field) at home in a resilient, but disappointing, 65-62 loss to the Spartans.

"We've just got to be able to move on from this," NU forward Drew Crawford said. "We're going to learn from it, learn how to run our offense more precisely. ... We're going to practice hard tomorrow and get ready for the rest of the Big Ten season."

That's probably the right attitude to take, but Northwestern has to consider this something of a disappointment, because there is good news and bad news baked into the loss.

The good news is that the Wildcats hung tough, came back from a 13-point deficit with 3:51 remaining in the second half, and nearly forced overtime before a bad inbound play doomed Crawford's last-ditch 3-point attempt. Juice Thompson, who had been quiet for much of the night, came alive in the final minutes and almost singlehandedly led his team to an unlikely comeback.

"Juice put us on his back and willed us back into the game," Crawford said.

More good news: Northwestern had a chance to win despite its best player -- a guy averaging 61.8 percent from 3 this season -- struggling through an ankle injury that robbed him of his ability to find open shots in Bill Carmody's tricky Princeton offense. For a team that has relied so much on outside shooting thus far, that counts as something of a moral victory.

Shurna's release is lightning-quick, but his feet, even when 100 percent healthy, are not. And his margin of error is a smaller when playing against athletic defenders like Michigan State's. Shurna never really found good looks -- his one made 3-pointer was the product of a leaning and-one foul on Michigan State guard Kalin Lucas -- and his production (11 points, 8-for-11 from the stripe) came entirely at the free throw line.

The bad news for Northwestern? The late heroics didn't produce a win. And what the Wildcats need right now is wins.

The calculus isn't difficult to figure out: Northwestern's NCAA tournament chances grow dimmer with every conference loss. As of Monday morning, ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi listed Northwestern as one of his first four teams to miss the tournament. Thanks to a nonconference schedule loaded with cupcakes and short on quality opponents (with the possible exception of St. John's), Northwestern can't afford to have a so-so conference season. It needs to handle its business against the Iowas and Indianas of the world, but it also needs to compile more than a few quality wins against the Purdues and Michigan States, too.

In other words, Monday night was a missed opportunity. With a trip to Illinois next on the docket, the Wildcats are in serious danger of beginning the Big Ten season 0-3. That's not the stuff mold-breaking NCAA tournament bids are made of.

"This is a very good team," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "I know I say this every year, and it sounds like I'm being hard on Bill, but ... Shurna's not 100 percent. "I watched him move earlier in the year and I watched him move the last two games and I don't think he's quite there, and they need him. He's their best player."

Shurna's bum ankle was especially noticeable on the biggest play of the game, when forward Draymond Green rebounded a missed Lucas free throw over Shurna with :12 seconds remaining in the second half. Green scored an easy layup on the play, gave Michigan State a three-point lead, and forced Northwestern into desperation 3-pointers on its last two possessions.

Green was again the star for Michigan State, a team that seems to be slowly but surely figuring things out. Izzo said his lineups are still in flux, and that he should have called timeouts down the stretch to help his players avoid the late letdown, but that he was otherwise happy with his team's performance.

"I think it will be one of those years for us where nothing is going to be easy," Izzo said. "We just got a little out of whack and I think I'm the one that needs to be blamed for that."

Izzo wouldn't take the blame for Michigan State's biggest ongoing issue, which is the Spartans' seeming inability to keep itself from turning the ball over. Michigan State had another plus-20 percent turnover rate performance Monday night; the Spartans turned the ball over 14 times, including on four key plays during Northwestern's late run.

"That's the problem right now," Izzo said. "I don't have an answer for you on that."

Still, despite the late flurry, Green's all-around play, mixed with some smart shooting, some especially impressive perimeter defense, and a one-make night from the hobbled Shurna propelled Michigan State to the win.

Whether the NCAA tournament selection committee eventually takes Shurna's injury into consideration is now in Northwestern's hands, because to receive NCAA tournament consideration, the Wildcats need to win games against teams better than Northern Illinois and Georgia Tech. And to win games, they need to make shots. It all sounds so simple, doesn't it?

Northwestern can not afford a long-term injury to John Shurna. The Wildcats, being a bubble team with a bad loss to St. John's sullying an already weak nonconference record, are on a bit of thin ice. Even this early in the season, Northwestern can't afford to drop too many Big Ten games going forward. It needs every single league win it can get. Without their brilliant sharpshooting forward, those wins would be much harder to come by.

Given all that, the Wildcats got some good news last night. Per ESPN Chicago's Scott Powers, Shurna returned to practice Wednesday. It's the first time Shurna's been able to get on the floor since he sprained his ankle against Mount St. Mary's on Dec. 23. Even better, it appears Shurna will be able to play in the Big Ten opener Friday against Purdue:

"If I'm able to cut and able to just help the team, I want to be out there," Shurna said. "It was fun to be out there [Wednesday at practice.] Hopefully, I'll get a shot Friday."

Northwestern coach Bill Carmody also was optimistic about Friday, but he thought how Shurna's ankle responded to Wednesday's practice would be telling.

"Ankles are weird," Carmody said. "Sometimes it gets better all of a sudden; sometimes it just lingers. Judging by yesterday, it didn't look too good [for him to play Friday]. Today, it looked better. I think each day it'll get better."

Shurna is as important to his team's offense as any player in the country. He's averaging 23.3 points on 60.3 percent shooting, including a ridiculous 62.3 percent from beyond the arc. Shurna's effective field goal percentage (74.2) is the second-best mark in the nation. His true shooting percentage (74.3) is the fifth-best. His offensive rating is a silly 132.6. He is, in layman's terms, an incredibly efficient shooter and one of the nation's best scorers at any position.

Shurna's absence would be tough even if Northwestern had an easy start to the Big Ten season, but that's not the case. Northwestern's difficult upcoming schedule -- at Purdue on Friday, vs. Michigan State on Monday, at Illinois on Thursday -- makes his presence all the more crucial. So, yeah. Good news.

When Northwestern announced that former star forward Kevin Coble wouldn't be returning to the Wildcats' roster in 2010-11 -- after a year of rehab for a foot injury Coble suffered during his rather stellar 2008-09 season -- well, let's just say the decision was mysterious.

Without much information to go on, it was assumed that Coble had merely decided he no longer wanted to play basketball. Strange, sure, but not unheard of. Maybe the kid just decided he wanted to focus on his grades and his professional future outside of basketball. Maybe, in that way, the decision was kind of admirable. And with Northwestern's discovery of Coble-lite in junior forward John Shurna in 2009-10, Coble's absence wouldn't cripple the Wildcats' tournament chances. No harm, no foul.

Turns out, the decision wasn't quite so simple. In an e-mail to Sports Illustrated, Coble wrote that he left the team because of an ultimatum given by coach Bill Carmody, and a disagreement between Coble's surgeons, Northwestern's doctors, and Carmody himself. Uh oh:

"One of the reasons for me leaving the team," Coble wrote in an e-mail, "was in response to repeated ultimatums by [Wildcats coach Bill] Carmody stating, 'You either go on the Italy trip, or you can't be a part of this program.' "

Northwestern embarked on a four-game exhibition tour of Italy in the final week of August, at which point Coble's surgeon -- who disagreed with NU's doctors on the length of Coble's rehabilitation from foot surgery -- had yet to clear him to play. Coble chose to remain with his family during that time and work with a therapist, effectively ending his college career. [...]

"The fact was my surgeon was not releasing me to begin playing with the team until September 15th," Coble wrote. "With that, I was not comfortable being in Europe during my last stages of rehabilitation. The medical treatment plan had me working with my physical therapists until that September 15th release date. Coach Carmody and I met multiple times in July in order to reach a resolution that wouldn't be so drastic, but unfortunately we were unable to come to an agreement. I had to choose what was in the long term best interest of my foot."

For his part, Carmody says he learned of the decision when Coble came into his office and told him he wasn't going to play. That, obviously, conflicts with Coble's account.

It's hard to imagine why, after a year of rehab, Coble would suddenly up and decide to skip his senior year of college hoops eligibility, especially with a potential career in the pros -- if not the NBA, then somewhere overseas -- on the horizon. Why give up after all that work? Why, after such a promising career to date, and a chance to break Northwestern's historic NCAA tournament drought alongside another skilled forward in Shurna, would Coble just decide he was no longer interested in basketball?

It didn't make much sense then. It doesn't make much sense now. Because if Coble's account is accurate, I'm still confused: Why wouldn't Carmody offer Coble the opportunity to finish rehabbing his foot? Why would he consider a preseason exhibition trip so crucial among Coble's responsibilities to the team? (It's a preseason exhibition trip; Coble wasn't exactly missing the Final Four here.) If Coble's telling is right, it almost feels like Carmody was attempting to run his former star player off. But that can't be right, can it? Why get rid of one of the best players of your tenure (even if you do have Shurna, as good a Coble replicant as you could find)? Why not take every possible chance to get to the NCAA tournament?

There are plenty of questions here, and no clear answers. But we know at least one thing: Coble's decision to leave Northwestern this summer wasn't mutual, and it wasn't about focusing on academics. Now we just need the real reason.

CHICAGO -- The NCAA's Board of Directors gave July recruiting a one-year reprieve on Thursday. Rather than eliminating the July recruiting period, as recommended by the Collegiate Commissioners Association last week, the NCAA decided to commission a one-year study to determine the various pros and cons associated with summer recruiting.

The reason for July's stay of execution? As our own Dave Telep wrote last week, the majority of college programs -- coaches especially -- dislike the idea. Most believe, as Telep wrote, that the rule's potential damage to coaches' scouting abilities outweighs the rule's ability to limit the influence of AAU power brokers, who thrive in July.

Around the same time the NCAA was making their announcement, nearly all of the Big Ten's coaches were fielding questions about the July recruiting period. If there's one thing coaches could agree on in regards to recruiting, it probably came from Michigan State's Tom Izzo.

"Recruiting's the hardest part of our job," Izzo said. "When you go all year long and you get a little bit of time -- and it's the nicest time of the year -- and you're gone almost the entire month, I think that makes it difficult."

Izzo wasn't exactly for or against the July recruiting period, though he did seem rather fond of the idea of getting some extra summer sun. (The Upper Peninsula is beautiful in July, right?) Izzo also made a salient version of the "everyone-plays-with-the-same-ball" line you might hear when someone complains about a basketball at pickup games: If everyone has to follow the same set of rules, they're probably going to get the same kind of kids, whether or not the July evaluation period exists.

More than anything, though, the Michigan State coach was worried about whether AAU summer hoops forces kids to play too many games as their bodies are still developing.

"I'd like to see a study on whether it's affecting our kids when they get in college," Izzo said. "Not only on the energy level and the passion for the game, but on whether or not we're wearing them out too early like sports sometimes do.

"I don't think we're looking at that angle," Izzo said. "Everybody says they'll continue to play. But, boy, if you had a son or a daughter and they're gone for what seems to be like two months of the summer for all these different camps, and you feel obligated to be at them, there is a wear-down factor."

As for the merits of the rule, Izzo's colleagues weren't convinced, though most admitted they didn't have an obvious solution to the agent-related problems the NCAA is trying to solve. A sampling of their thoughts:

• Ohio State coach Thad Matta: "I don't know if I have a definitive answer. It's kind of like when everyone asks me about the one and done. I don't know what's right, what's wrong. I would think if they were to take July away or cut it back, hopefully they would give us the days throughout the course of the year. ... I understand where they're going. I think that agents -- that to me right now is the biggest thing that's going on. And I love what football is doing. They had a blowup and they took the bull by the horns, and they're getting this thing corrected. And the same thing that goes on in football goes on in basketball."
• Northwestern coach Bill Carmody: "I'm not too sure what the alternative is. ... I think sometimes in the past with recruiting, there have been some knee-jerk reactions, and then a year later the rules changed. So I think people recognize there's a need to do something here. I just think more thought has to go into what's the best [solution], not just for our conference, but for college basketball. ... I think it's great that we're tossing it about, because certainly there are things about it that have to improve."
• Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan: "For me, some of the best players that I've coached I saw during the July period, because I've coached at every different level. ... I think some coaches, they can just snap their fingers and get whoever they want. So they probably don't want to be out in July. I don't think you're ever going to eliminate third-party influences by saying you're not going to have July recruiting. I think whoever had that idea definitely hasn't been with us. ... There's stories both ways, I'm sure, but I like to stick with the basketball part of it and what it means to be able to see young men play rather than always talk about the negatives that might surround five kids. So I like July. I don't like it extended."
• Illinois coach Bruce Weber: "I know it will be a hot topic over the next year, to see what happens with it. There's good and bad. The good is you obviously get to see a lot of kids at one time. The bad is I think sometimes the kids have too much basketball, too much travel, and it's hard on the coaches and players in a tough period. ... I've been doing it for 30-some years, and I've been out every summer. If it would change, it would be a big change for coaches, I know that."

Musical guests at Midnight Madness are a relatively recent phenomenon. Drake showed up to Kentucky's Big Blue Madness last year, but he didn't perform. Yo Gotti is making the rounds again at Memphis this year, and that has at least one recruit's mother very excited.

This might be the most high-profile of them all -- and it's happening where you'd least expect it. The Northwestern Wildcats are hosting a concert by Snoop Dogg and Kid Cudi in conjunction with Friday night's Midnight Madness event, which the Wildcats have created dubbed "Hoops and Snoop," according to a release from the school. The concert is part of Northwestern's annual A&O Fall Blowout Show, so while it's not exactly a Midnight Madness performance, the school has scheduled its basketball event at 5:30 p.m. and is offering shuttles to the concert at Welsh-Ryan Arena after the show.

Why is this a surprise? Because you wouldn't expect a program like Northwestern, a school that's still somehow searching for its first-ever bid to the NCAA tournament, to be hosting what is arguably the biggest Midnight Madness concert we've seen to date. You'd expect this from, well, Kentucky. Or Kansas. Or Duke. But Northwestern? And, sure, it's not exactly a Midnight Madness performance -- it's hard to imagine Snoop performing during the introduction of Bill Carmody and John Shurna -- but it's close enough.

In any case, it has Northwestern students plenty excited, and that, perhaps more than anything else, is what Midnight Madness is all about.

Last night, the news that senior Northwestern star Kevin Coble was not, in fact, going to return from last year's season-ending injury to play his final year of eligibility at Northwestern -- instead planning to devote his time to academics -- came as something of a surprise. Coble was Northwestern's best player in 2008-09, and his addition would have theoretically given Northwestern a legitimate shot at making its first NCAA tournament ever. (Frequent readers will know that I say that a lot about Northwestern, but it's not because I'm trying to be mean. Promise. It just happens to be the most salient fact about Northwestern basketball. And it blows my mind.)

Anyway, Coble was going to put last year's downright competent 20-win Wildcats over the top. That was the plan. Now the plan is kaput. So Northwestern should just go ahead and shelve that whole NCAA tournament idea, right?

Not so fast, actually: The Only Colors makes a rather salient point about Northwestern's performance in 2009-10 today, which is that sophomore forward Jon Shurna essentially was Kevin Coble:

Further, as I've previously observed, the way Shurna blossomed this past season, he effectively replicated Coble's precise role and level of production in the offense. Having two tall, lanky forwards (both were listed at exactly 6'8", 210 pounds) who can score from all over the court would certainly be an asset, but how much would their roles overlap and end up negating each other? [...] Which brings me to a final point: Ultimately, Northwestern's success in 2011 will hinge on whether they can start to play effective defense more consistently. And, as good a player as Kevin Coble was, he was much more of an offensive threat than he was a defensive difference-maker.

Basketball Prospectus' John Gasaway concurs. A cursory glance at Northwestern's adjusted efficiency numbers tells you all you need to know about the 2009-10 Wildcats. They were great on offense -- the No. 33 most efficient team in the country. They turned the ball over infrequently, attempted 3s at an incredibly high rate and made enough of their shots that their deficiencies on the offensive glass didn't much matter. With most of their starters, including Shurna, returning in 2010-11, it's fair to expect the same level of offensive success from Bill Carmody's team.

The problem was, and will be, defense. NU was the No. 169 most efficient defense in the country, which basically means that it didn't stop anybody. (And the Wildcats fouled everybody.) That has to change.

Would it have been nice to have Coble? Absolutely. Could he have formed a dynamic frontcourt duo with Shurna? Possibly. Would he have changed the essential nature of his team? Doubtful. So, sure, Coble's decision is something of a bummer for Northwestern fans, but whether Northwestern will break that incredible tourney-less streak in 2010-11 will have far less to do with Coble's absence and far more to do with whether Carmody can get his team to play even mediocre defense.

See? Optimism. Sort of.