NCAA Tournament March Madness

#60 Northwestern

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Projection: likely out

Northwestern’s résumé features a few meaningful moments, most notably the road victory at USC, the neutral-site win over South Carolina and the gritty road triumph at DePaul, which show the team can win away from home, but those bright spots are overwhelmed by damaging home losses to Illinois and Nebraska, the defeat in a high-profile conference arena at Michigan State and neutral setbacks to Virginia and Oklahoma State that underline inconsistency against quality opponents. The lack of a truly signature win to offset those bad results and the presence of multiple damaging outcomes at home leave little margin for error. With upcoming opportunities that include difficult road tests at Illinois and Nebraska and a need to beat quality opponents at home such as Washington, Maryland, Oregon and Purdue, Northwestern’s current body of work puts them on the wrong side of the field unless a clear run of quality wins comes together.

Date Opponent Ranking Outcome
11/3Mercyhurst301W70-47
11/7Boston Univ289W76-52
11/10Cleveland St319W110-63
11/14@DePaul102W81-79
11/21(N)Virginia17L83-78
11/23(N)South Carolina77W79-77
11/27(N)Oklahoma St68L86-81
12/3@Wisconsin39L85-73
12/6Ohio St38L86-82
12/13Jackson St342W93-53
12/16Valparaiso157W86-70
12/20(N)Butler55L61-58
12/30Howard274W80-60
1/3Minnesota84L84-78
1/8@Michigan St6L76-66
1/11@Rutgers158L77-75
1/14Illinois4L79-68
1/17Nebraska12L77-58
1/21@USC50W74-68
1/24@UCLA41L71-64
1/29Penn St13381%
1/31Washington4854%
2/4@Illinois48%
2/8@Iowa2116%
2/11Michigan213%
2/14@Nebraska1211%
2/18Maryland12681%
2/24@Indiana3525%
2/28Oregon9171%
3/4Purdue822%
3/7@Minnesota8447%