After breakthrough and downturn, Chris Collins has Northwestern trending up

NEW YORK – The building of Northwestern into an NCAA tournament team took Chris Collins four years.

The building back of Northwestern took longer — but now the Wildcats are in more of a sustainable spot, notching their second straight bid.

“We kind of dusted ourselves off. We had to have a reset,” Collins said on Thursday. “We brought in a bunch of young guys, Boo Buie being one of them, as part of that core, and we worked through some growing pains.

“And then these last two years to get back to the other side of it has been incredibly rewarding.”

Collins and Northwestern are in Brooklyn this week for a first-round matchup against one of last year’s darlings, Florida Atlantic. That 8-9 game — FAU is the 8-seed, Northwestern the 9 — is slated for 12:15 p.m. Friday. The winner presumably gets the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, Connecticut, on Sunday.

Buie became Northwestern’s all-time scoring leader this season, having scored 2,156 points. The Wildcats finished tied for third in the Big Ten and beat the two teams above them in overtime, Purdue and Illinois.

In his 11th season, Collins has Northwestern in the NCAA tournament for the third time. The first one was the momentous one, with the Wildcats going in 2017 — his fourth season — and becoming the last power conference team to earn a first-time bid.

Collins was a team captain for Duke in his senior season (1995-96) and was a 1,000-point scorer. He was on Mike Krzyzewski's staff from 2000-13, being a part of two national championship teams.

Northwestern is undefeated in first-round games — having won all two of them. The Wildcats were an 8-seed in 2017 and beat Vanderbilt 68-66; they were a 7-seed last year and beat Boise State 75-67.

In between, Northwestern was 60-90 (26-71 in the Big Ten). The Wildcats finished in every double-digit position possible in the league’s standings in those five seasons — 10th, 14th, 13th, 12th and 11th.

“Going in 2017 was historical, first time ever in the history of the school, and it was an amazing experience, but we were not able to follow that up and sustain it,” Collins said. “Over the next couple years, we kind of took a step back to the bottom of our league, which was painful to go through.”

It’s these last two seasons, though, that seems to have established Northwestern’s staying power as an NCAA tournament team.

Northwestern won 22 games last season, entering the year as the last-place pick in the Big Ten’s preseason poll.

“It was important to sustain this — after last year, we were picked last in our league and no one really expected us to be there. We had an awesome year,” Collins said. “Finished it, won a game in the tournament.

“Lost some players but returned kind of a core, and it was a real motivating piece for our players and for our coaches to say, hey, let's stack another one. Let's show that we can sustain this thing.”