NCAA Tournament March Madness

#66 Northwestern

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Projection: likely out

Northwestern’s season shows flashes of the kind of resume-building wins committees like to see, with road victories at USC and Indiana and a neutral-site victory over South Carolina that prove the team can win away from home, but those moments are outweighed by a string of damaging defeats. The Wildcats dropped neutral games to Virginia, Oklahoma State and Butler and suffered an embarrassingly lopsided trip to Illinois in addition to troubling home losses to Nebraska and Michigan, and those kinds of results are exactly what will make a committee wary. Given how many top opponents they’ve faced, sporadic road success and those signature missed opportunities leave Northwestern leaning toward the wrong side of the bubble, and the upcoming trip to Minnesota is a straightforward chance to flip the narrative.

Date Opponent Ranking Outcome
11/3Mercyhurst284W70-47
11/7Boston Univ263W76-52
11/10Cleveland St323W110-63
11/14@DePaul96W81-79
11/21(N)Virginia19L83-78
11/23(N)South Carolina98W79-77
11/27(N)Oklahoma St68L86-81
12/3@Wisconsin25L85-73
12/6Ohio St27L86-82
12/13Jackson St342W93-53
12/16Valparaiso157W86-70
12/20(N)Butler89L61-58
12/30Howard201W80-60
1/3Minnesota72L84-78
1/8@Michigan St10L76-66
1/11@Rutgers133L77-75
1/14Illinois5L79-68
1/17Nebraska12L77-58
1/21@USC69W74-68
1/24@UCLA34L71-64
1/29Penn St137W94-73
1/31Washington52L76-62
2/4@Illinois5L84-44
2/8@Iowa23L76-70
2/11Michigan2L87-75
2/14@Nebraska12L68-49
2/18Maryland134W78-74
2/24@Indiana41W72-68
2/28Oregon100W63-62
3/4Purdue7L70-66
3/7@Minnesota7241%