A Century of Hoops: The History of Northwestern University Basketball

The Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team represents Northwestern University in the Big Ten Conference as an NCAA Division I college basketball team. Since 2013, the team has been under the guidance of coach Chris Collins. From its early successes in the 20th century to its historic NCAA Tournament appearance in 2017, the program has a rich and storied past.

The Early Years: Establishing a Program

Men's basketball made its debut at Northwestern in 1901. The Northwestern Wildcats launched their inaugural season of intercollegiate play in 1904-05, where they faced off against the University of Chicago, ultimately losing 19-34.

Early Success and a Retroactive National Championship

Although Northwestern had great success in the early 20th century, it has spent most of the time since World War II in the bottom half of the Big Ten. The Wildcats were retroactively selected as the 1930-31 national champion by both the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll. While the NCAA lists the historical Helms selections for reference, neither the Helms nor the Premo-Porretta titles are officially recognized as NCAA national championships. Northwestern has won only one other conference title, in 1933.

Adding to the unusual occurrences of the era, a scoring error occurred during the Notre Dame game in 1936. Originally ruled a 21-20 win for Notre Dame, it was later determined to be a tie when it was discovered Notre Dame had received one more point than they had actually scored. Notre Dame returned to the court to finish the game, but Northwestern refused to return to the court.

Struggles and Near Misses: The Long Road

It has only finished better than fourth place twice since World War II, and did not have a winning record in conference play from 1968 until 2017. Only the 2003-04 team managed a .500 conference record during that time. Until making their first NCAA tournament in 2017, Northwestern had been one of five original NCAA Division I schools and the only school from a power conference to have never played an NCAA tournament game.

A Historic Breakthrough: The 2017 NCAA Tournament

On March 1, 2017, the Wildcats achieved a significant milestone, winning their 10th conference game against Michigan (67-65) and clinching their first winning Big Ten record in almost half a century. The first NCAA tournament championship was held at Northwestern in March 1939. Northwestern won its first tournament game, defeating Vanderbilt 68-66. The Wildcats lost in the second round to No. 1 Gonzaga, but the season marked a turning point for the program.