Big Ten Basketball: Ranking all 14 head coaches for 2019-20 season

12. Chris Collins (Northwestern)

For years and years, Northwestern was searching and Collins was finally able to deliver for a hungry program. His 2017 team gave the Wildcats their first appearance in the NCAA Tournament, a remarkable fact for a Big Ten program. Northwestern has never been a talent at basketball, but are the Wildcats returning to old ways in recent times?

Collins is a Chicago native who played and coached under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. He helped recruit Jon Scheyer, who attended the same high school as him and played a role in multiple Duke titles as an assistant coach. Like many of Krzyzewski’s assistants before him, Collins had long received interest for head coaching jobs, though it wasn’t until hometown Northwestern came calling in 2013 that Collins departed Durham and the Blue Devils.

You can look at his record and see a troublesome 40-70 mark in Big Ten play, but this seems impressive compared to some of his predecessors. What stands out is the aforementioned 2017 season, when the Wildcats not only made their first NCAA Tournament but knocked off Vanderbilt for their first NCAA Tournament victory. Unfortunately, the two seasons since then have both been disastrous. A 15-win campaign in 2018 was followed by a last-place finish in 2019.

Fortunately, it’s very unlikely that Collins is on the hot seat unless another couple of seasons completely fall apart for the Wildcats. Predecessor Bill Carmody got 13 years in Evanston without an NCAA Tournament and Collins will have plenty of time to turn the tides on this program. Above all, Collins took an unwinnable program to postseason glory, an impressive accomplishment for any young coach. While he’s not exactly the first choice to replace Krzyzewski when he inevitably retires, Collins has still done a solid enough job at one of the Big Ten’s worst programs.