Northwestern lost to Chicago State last night. This was bad for Northwestern. Twelve days after upsetting Purdue, one of the three or four best teams in the country, the Wildcats managed to lose, at home, to Division I’s lone independent men’s basketball team, a program that’s only won ten games twice in the last ten seasons, a program representing a school with an endowment more than two thousand times smaller that of the highly-regarded university up in Evanston. Northwestern had found its way into the AP Poll after the win over Purdue. Northwestern was a 7-seed in the NCAA Tournament last year. Northwestern woke up this morning between Grand Canyon and UC Irvine on kenpom.
What this means for Northwestern and for the Big Ten will depend on how Northwestern plays from here. If the Wildcats play to their old average, their average performance before the loss, they’ll likely wind up somewhere right around the bubble, and the severity of this loss will become a subjective matter for the selection committee to evaluate. If the Wildcats play to their new average, the one that includes the loss, they’ll be in the mix for one of those new NIT automatic bids. The Big Ten was never likely to get a Final Four appearance from this Northwestern team, but there’s perception value in filling out the AP Top 25, and there’s value in extra tournament berths, and your best team losing to a 10-seed on the road is different from your best team losing to the team which lost to Chicago State. It’s been a bad start to the season for the Big Ten, and it just got worse.
What this means for Chicago State?
In terms of this season’s destination, it doesn’t change a whole lot. Chicago State is an independent, the one postseason-eligible Division I team with no NCAA Tournament path. Even after the win, kenpom projects them to finish only 10–20, half a game worse than last year’s final mark. In terms of this season’s story, though, and the story of the program as a whole, this is game-changing. In the kenpom era, which stretches back to the 1998–99 season, Chicago State has never beaten a team ranked as highly as Northwestern is currently ranked. Considering the Cougars only joined the NCAA in 1984, there’s a good chance this is the biggest win in school history. That means something to these players, and to Gerald Gillion, this coach. Ahead of a transition to the NEC next fall, it might mean something for the program as well.
Chicago State is terribly under-resourced, a tiny school wedged deep in Chicago’s South Side. It’s a Predominantly Black Institution, a similar designation to an HBCU. Its undergraduate enrollment is below 2,000. Its endowment, as of 2019, was only around $5 million. There are a lot of small schools in the NCAA’s Division I, but it’s hard to think of one with as tough a deck to draw from as a tiny, publicly funded PBI in Chicago, Illinois. At the same time, though…
At the same time, Chicago State would be expected to finish somewhere between 4th and 6th in the NEC if they were in it right now, and they’d only be about a 4-point underdog on a neutral court against the current NEC favorite, Merrimack. The WAC—Chicago State’s most recent conference home—was a much tougher league than the NEC. The NEC is Division I’s worst basketball conference, and it’s not particularly close. Fairleigh Dickinson, last year’s NEC auto-bid, wasn’t just a 16-seed. Fairleigh Dickinson was, entering the NCAA Tournament, the worst 16-seed in the field on paper. The South Side of Chicago, meanwhile, is a good recruiting ground, and while it’s silly to expect Gillion and his staff to land five-stars, talent in Chicago goes deeper than players ranked by 247.
As Notre Dame football illustrates, independents in college sports are often judged by their best and their worst result of the season. No matter how bad Chicago State’s worst loss becomes this year, the best win is going to define it, and while they have chances at even better teams than Northwestern still on the schedule, last night was already a great peak.
The cosmic deck? It’s stacked against Chicago State. But for the first time, perhaps ever, there’s some wind in the sails for this program. For the first time, perhaps ever, there’s a believable path to relevance within Division I basketball.
A Redshirt Ruckus
We wrote yesterday about the 14-day temporary restraining order a West Virginia judge placed on the NCAA, restricting it from enforcing its rule that undergrad athletes transferring a second time must sit out a full year unless they get a waiver. A question, at the time of publication, was whether the NCAA would consider games played by athletes during these 14 days as a use of eligibility. Today, the NCAA answered: Yes. If a player plays during these 14 days, consider their redshirt burned.
There’s a lot that’s ridiculous here, and it’s not only coming from the NCAA. But I struggle to understand why football players can play up to four games in a season without using a year of eligibility while basketball players, at least by my impression, cannot. It’s so weird that I’m worried I’m misunderstanding the rule, but I’m failing to find credible sources sharing any other impression. The NCAA’s justification for football’s special treatment is that it discourages players from having to play through injuries, by deepening the bench, and that it gives coaches the opportunity to get some experience for their younger players. Surely, though, this also applies for basketball? Maybe the injury risk isn’t as severe—concussions are much rarer in basketball than football—but it would seem that if one sport allows players to play a third of the season, other sports should as well.
We have some sympathy for the NCAA regarding its dueling mandates about transfer eligibility—schools want their own guys eligible, they want others ineligible. But this is an unforced error, and for as disruptive as the judge’s decision is, it’s a mess of the NCAA’s own making, which isn’t always actually the case.
Ohtani’s Opt-Out
We continue to learn more about Shohei Ohtani’s contract, and the latest report, first by the AP and confirmed by ESPN, is that Ohtani can opt out if Dodgers owner Mark Walter or Dodgers PBO (president of baseball operations) Andrew Friedman stops being part of the franchise.
This is weird, but…it makes sense, right? Where it gets interesting, I suppose, is where we ask what happens to the deferred money if Ohtani does opt out. I’d assume it would be proportional, but maybe not?
Regardless, an opt-out is unlikely, even if the Dodgers go south and Walter cans Friedman, or if Walter dies (God forbid) or decides he wants out. Assuming Ohtani ages normally and there’s no massive inflation in baseball salaries, his worth isn’t going to be as high in two or three years as it is right now. The scenario would have to unfold in the nearer future for this to actually matter.
Hoskins vs. Bellinger
A school of thought regarding the Cubs’ offseason holds that Rhys Hoskins is a backup plan if they don’t land Cody Bellinger. Should this be the case?
Hoskins, 31 years old in March and coming off a torn ACL, is expected to sign for something like $14M annually, likely on a short-term deal (I’m using FanGraphs’s Crowd Source projections on this, which have held up well so far, even with the Ohtani contract). Bellinger, 28 years old and coming off a top-5 season among this free agent class, is expected to sign for roughly $24M annually, and for six or more years. Bellinger’s market is drying up a bit, with the Giants signing Jung Hoo Lee and the Yankees trading for Juan Soto, but it would take a big surprise for the AAV on Bellinger’s eventual deal to land south of even $20M.
The situation, then, is that Hoskins is a bigger short-term risk (he’s at the wrong spot in the aging curve and just missed a whole season with a severe injury) and Bellinger is a bigger long-term risk (he’s had one season worth that much money in the last three years). Hoskins, firmly a 1B/DH, has less positional flexibility than Bellinger, a 1B/CF/DH. The Cubs know Bellinger intimately, having spent 2023 with the guy. Hoskins is more of an unknown. But statistical projections for the pair in 2024 are very close. FanGraphs has Bellinger as a 2.6-WAR player. It has Hoskins at 2.0 WAR. The more Bellinger plays first base or serves as the DH, the more Bellinger’s value drops. Age is important—Bellinger should still be worth 2.6 WAR in the median 2025 scenario, while Hoskins’s value will drop closer to 1.5—but expectations are that no matter who signs each player, Hoskins’s contract will offer better value to his team than Bellinger’s.
There’s a lot of pressure on Jed Hoyer to sign big names, and there’s a perception that he doesn’t do it. Just last winter, though, the Cubs overpaid on paper for Dansby Swanson. They went big on a free agent shortstop, and it’s worked out great for the Cubs so far. This can be spun both ways. On one hand, it’s worked, so you can argue Hoyer should do it more; on the other, Hoyer picked his spot, and that worked, so he should be trusted to navigate this inexact scientific field. Overall, it’s hard to fault a guy whose three seasons as PBO have seen the Cubs steadily improve from 71 wins, to 74, to 83 and the brink of a playoff berth. It would be one thing if the farm system was still struggling, but it isn’t. It’s thriving. And with Tom Ricketts’s history of tightening the purse strings after a big deal went badly, the downside of aggression is higher for Hoyer than the downside of patience. If there’s a single bad contract on the Cubs payroll right now, it’s that of Jameson Taillon. Even that one isn’t hideously expensive, and it only goes through 2026. Flexibility is high. That doesn’t mean now is automatically the time to push all the chips to the center.
Between Hoskins and Bellinger, comparing directly, Bellinger is likelier to help the Cubs win these next three years. If signing Bellinger weakens Hoyer’s ability to pursue starting pitching, though—the Cubs’ most glaring weakness—it’s hard to be mad at a guy for making value plays. It’s not the only thing he’s doing. And so far, he hasn’t sat content to finish runner-up in every free agent bidding war. He isn’t declining to take big swings. He’s picking his spots.
Gragson to SHR, Kyrgios Wants to Retire, Hawks vs. Kraken, Bulls vs. Heat
Some shorter thoughts and news:
- Noah Gragson is filling Aric Almirola’s spot at Stewart-Haas Racing, becoming the latest NASCAR driver to improve his lot by getting cut after getting himself suspended. In addition to that angle, it’s interesting how Gragson’s changed the narrative on himself these last few years. Unless I’m misremembering, I thought he was one of the archetypes of the “spoiled rich kids” driving in the Xfinity Series a few years ago. I’m sure the money still helps, but my impression isn’t that SHR is handing out rides in exchange for cash. There is ability there.
- Nick Kyrgios’s injuries have gotten to the point where he said on a podcast this week (the “On Purpose with Jay Shetty” podcast) that he would never play tennis if he could do it all again. So, that’s where Kyrgios’s situation’s at. He’s missing the Australian Open, still recovering from knee and wrist injuries.
- The Blackhawks are in Seattle tonight to play the Kraken, and evidently their flight was diverted to Portland on Tuesday night, so they didn’t get to practice yesterday. They’ve lost six of their last eight, but: The last game before that run was against the Kraken. So the door’s open!
- The Bulls are in Miami to play the Heat. Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro are out for the Heat, among others, and Alex Caruso’s back for the Bulls. The Bulls are still 3.5-point underdogs.
