It's been a full 15 hours since our collective hearts were broken in the worst way in Indianapolis, and there's been a lot of sadness/anger/depression/weeping into shoulders while hugging it out/drinking going on in that time. Understandably, almost immediately we launched into a "should Carmody stay or should he go" debate, and even though this is essentially the same debate that's been going on for the past, oh, three or so years, I feel like we now have enough information to make a judgement on what his future with the program should be. We know enough about the direction of the program, the past results, and the future potential to make a reasoned decision about Carmody.

He should stay.

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So, we're all organizing watch parties all around the country, but people seem to forget that Chicago (and to a lesser extent Evanston) is where the 'Cats call home. Shame on them for traveling to Boston in the first week of the season, and shame on them for having games before classes start (and there's no one around) but we have to make the best, eh?

To that end I propose getting a watch party going somewhere in Chicagoland. I'll be happy to organize it if I get enough interest. I know most of these things take place at bars, so I'd like to be able to get something going at like the Globe Cafe next to the old Hotel Orrington, but at the same time we could have a grand ol' time watching the game with a bunch of peeps at my place. I'll bring beer, or something. I've tried for a few years now to set up watch parties for road games and it's never happened, but lets make it so this time, eh?

Rsvp in the comments or something, and make suggestions as to what we could do. There are people still in the greater Chicago area, yeah?

ESPN today has a poll up on their front page, much like they do every day, although this time it's particularly interesting. The question is "would you rather your favorite team (a) lose in one of the first 4 NCAA tourney games or (b) make a deep run in the NIT. I, being a Northwestern fan, instantly thought that the results would clearly be "lose in the first 4" by a mile. When I submitted my vote, however, I was surprised to find that the current split was only about 55 - 45 in favor of (a). So I thought good and hard about which I'd rather and came to this conclusion:

I'd rather NU make a run in the NIT.

I'm sure that the typical NU fan could really make a good case either way (regardless of whether he actually subscribes to his point or not; we're all masters of debate here), but I think there's a clear case for an NIT run that would be very hard to dismiss and that has to do with one fact: the NCAA tournament has 64 teams. If you look at any bracket, there are 64 openings with 4 of them taken by something along the lines of "play in winner" or "UAB/Clemson" or what have you. If you ask any fan how many teams are in the NCAA tourney, they'd likely say something that includes the words "technically" and "sixty-eight" grouped right next to each other. The point is, it seems to me that losing one of the play-ins means you didn't really make the tournament.

For NU, who hasn't had any postseason success, I'd much rather they start with the NIT and have something to hang their collective hat on than saying "well we were almost in the field of 64, but we lost in the play-in." I want NU to be able to say "look we were successful in the post season" and point to something valid. The fact is until we're playing against some team with a different seed number in the NCAAs, we haven't really made the tournament, and losing in the opening salvo of games won't change the perception of NU basketball. People will still be able to say that our team hasn't done anything yet, so I'd rather take the baby steps with the NIT and then work up to actually making the tournament that matters.

So yeah, I'm curious as to what everyone else with purple-tinted glasses thinks, so here's that poll, again.

So there's been a fair amount of talk in the comments lately about a meetup of S.O.P regulars after Gameday and before the game, but it seems like there hasn't really been a plan beyond "hey maybe come find me or something." So I'd like to propose an official meetup.

My thoughts are:

Dark Horse Bar and Grille, 3443 North Sheffield, 12pm

If anyone wants to actually do this, say so in the comments. I think it'd be a lot of fun to have the S.O.P crew get together and just hang out for a while. I don't actually know anyone here, and this would be a great opportunity to rectify this. I know it's late notice, but hey, it could still work.

I'll be the tall, lanky 20-something in the purple Northwestern hoodie and bandana. Signage to be updated when I have one.

I know no one should really be surprised by the announcement, but the Big Ten made it official and announced the tournament seedings sometime today, so now we as northwestern fans know what we're up against. The official bracket is here and you should all gaze in wonder. Or something.

ANYWAY the important thing is how NU is going to faire, right? Right. So here's some of my thoughts:

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I'd like to try out a little experiment here, with Rodger's blessings. I've noticed that Auburn fans and NU fans have been hopping back and forth between Sippin' on Purple and Track 'em Tigers, commenting on threads and ribbing each other a bit. I'd like to take this opportunity to gather all of us into one central place.

Lord knows that the Sippin' main page scrolls very fast, and sometime posts fall out of the public eye quickly, and some threads that had promising discussions disappear with them (don't stop though, Rodger, we love you for it). In an effort to quell that, I'm posting this as a FanPost, because they don't move nearly as quickly, and still update with new comments notifications and fun stuff like that.

I know that we could all head over to ESPN, but let's face it, the ESPN game thread is a shit storm of homerism and superiority complexes. Everyone over here is much nicer, frankly. I do post at ESPN, but I also like to have discussions with people I can relate to. Also they don't tell you when someone posts a new comment. So curb that craziness, to promote monthlong friendships between NU and AU, while at the same time fostering that beloved sense of competition, I present the December Northwestern versus Auburn Fan Thread for Discussion. Comment away :)

Northwestern basketball is in a bit of a conundrum early in the season. We've lost our single best player, team leader, and all-around super-dude Kevin Coble to something called a "Lisfranc fracture." We've lost his primary backup Jeff Ryan to a torn ACL. Jeremy Nash might have serious heart problems. These are things that could get any team out of rhythm for a while. And for a while I mean a few days. Coble is still on the sidelines, which should help leadership. The team should begin to accept Ryan's injury. We'll know more about Nash in the coming days. Ideally this whole thing should blow over by the end of next week and we should have the inklings of a team identity without Coble. 

It's true, I had almost no hope us winning this game. Butler is ranked 10th in the nation for a reason (from my experience, basketball rankings don't fluctuate nearly as wildly as their football counterparts), and to upset such a team in the second game of the season down 2 players and reeling from misfortune would have been nothing short of a miracle. I think we might have actually laked the Ryan Field goalposts if we had won that game. But we didn't, and that was expected. But I also expected to come away from the game feeling like we played our hardest and still have a fighting chance for the rest of the season.

That expectation fell surprisingly... dishearteningly... flat.

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