How Chris Collins and his dreams turned Northwestern's into reality

EVANSTON, Ill. — As the pace of the leg-jingling quickened, as the slumps became more pronounced, and as name after name flashed across the enormous screen that hung over center court, the murmur that filled Welsh-Ryan Arena for almost half an hour on Sunday grew more and more audible.

Arkansas. Seton Hall. It got louder. Dayton. Wichita State. It was now tinged with fear.

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Northwestern’s Selection Sunday wait was dragging on and on — 25 minutes … 27 … 29 — and as it did, 78 years of agony and false hope came flooding back to the couple thousand fans in attendance at the program’s first-ever selection show watch party. Not a soul knew how to handle angst. Nervous excitement morphed into pure nervousness.

After the third of four regions was unveiled, and still the wait continued, the Northwestern band struck up a tune, but not many in the building cared to listen. They were terrified. Down on the court, point guard Bryant McIntosh puffed up his cheeks and exhaled. He ran his palms down his face. Among the players, the smiles that had been ever-present 30 minutes earlier were now scarce.

But in between the players, there was Chris Collins, clapping along with the band, chatting with players and assistants.

Collins was anxious. But Collins was confident. Collins believed.

And then he bolted straight up from his chair, arms and index fingers aloft. McIntosh, after a few steps forward toward his jubilant teammates, after a few hops up and down, turned back toward his coach, and went in for a bear hug. For a brief moment amid the eruption, coach and point guard stood there, locked in an embrace, point guard’s head over the coach’s shoulder, motionless except for a slight side-to-side sway.

Minutes later, Collins fought back tears while addressing the crowd. Soon thereafter, he and McIntosh scurried off to fulfill media responsibilities, Collins with CBS, eventually ESPN and so many others, McIntosh with a heavy throng of national and local reporters in a back room on the second floor.

As they did, as late afternoon bled into evening, as evening bled into night, Welsh-Ryan Arena unwound for the final time, an 18-month renovation project already underway. Fans filed out, some still joyous, others ruminating on a day years, perhaps decades, perhaps a half century in the making. Players mingled with friends and family. Assistant coach Brian James snapped a picture of the low-hanging scoreboard, which displayed a simple message: IT’S TIME.

At 9:07 p.m., one final two-man camera crew packed up, the last few janitorial workers filtered out, and the cozy old gym, after seven hours of incessant motion and noise, was still. The old-fashioned ceiling fans that hang from above buzzed. A generator droned on, its monotonous hum the only thing separating the celebration-stained air from silence. And Welsh-Ryan, on this transformational day, returned to its primitive state — the state Chris Collins found it in three years, 11 months and 11 days ago, on the night a dream was born.

***

All fabled basketball stories seem to begin in an empty gym, and the story of Northwestern’s first trip to the NCAA tournament is no different. It was here, at Welsh-Ryan on Monday, April 1, 2013, that Chris Collins scanned the empty wooden bleachers for the first time in 21 years. He was engulfed in darkness, the gym’s lights asleep for the night, unprepared for his arrival.

Collins was about 30 hours removed from an Elite Eight loss to Louisville in his final game as an assistant coach at Duke. The following day, he jetted to Chicago, where Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips, who had made Collins the school’s 24th head men’s basketball coach, picked him up from the airport. They cruised to Pete Miller’s, a popular steak and seafood restaurant in Evanston, where Collins met his new players for the first time over dinner.

And then Collins, on the eve of his introductory press conference, felt an urge to go see the gym. His gym.

He arrived with his wife, Kim, and his two kids alongside him. He peered through the darkness up to the outdated scoreboard, up to the dormant, nondescript lighting fixtures, to the rickety-looking catwalks and barren rafters. He spent 20 minutes out on the court, taking in the scene, the scent, the sounds, everything. He spent 20 minutes entranced.

He spent 20 minutes dreaming.

Chris Collins is a dreamer. “I’m still a little kid at heart,” he says. “I think it’s one of my strengths.” If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. And here, for the first time since taking it, and for the first time as a head basketball coach, Collins allowed himself to dream. He dreamed of ear drum-rattling noise. He dreamed of an atmosphere similar to the one he experienced in his final high school game, the last time he set foot on this floor. He dreamed of bleachers filled with purple, of students overflowing into the concourse, of wins, of national TV games, of national relevance, and, of course, of making history.

And then the following morning, he got to work. The first task: Find a few assistant coaches and a core group of players who loved to dream as much as he did.

***

The most famous story in the annals of Northwestern athletics begins when Chris Collins was a senior at Glenbrook North High School in 1992. But it doesn’t begin with Collins. It has nothing to do with basketball. It begins with belief — belief without evidence.

In 1992, Northwestern hired Gary Barnett to take over a football program that, over the previous two decades, had won four or more games in a season just once. It hadn’t been to a bowl since the 1940s. Barnett, Colorado’s offensive coordinator at the time, was ridiculed for even considering the job.

But Barnett had a mantra: “Belief without evidence.” There was no evidence that it was possible to win football games at Northwestern. Barnett believed he could.

Three years later, those three words were on signs all over Northwestern’s locker room during arguably the most stunning season in the history of college sports. The Wildcats, coming off a three-win 1994 campaign, shocked the likes of Notre Dame, Michigan, Wisconsin and Penn State, won the Big Ten, and went to the Rose Bowl. When players from that team reflect on the season two decades later, they can’t help but come back to Barnett’s slogan. Belief without evidence. “Belief without evidence,” they’ll tell you, “is the definition of faith.”

Eighteen years after that magical ride, and soon after Collins arrived at Northwestern, one of the school’s prominent donors, Steve Wilson, had a gift for him. It was Barnett’s book, High Hopes, a first-person account of the ’95 season and everything that went into it. Collins read it multiple times. He loved it.

Shortly thereafter, he carried its message with him out to the recruiting trail. He didn’t use the same exact phrase, but the idea was nearly identical. “I have nothing tangible,” Collins told highly-touted high school players. “I can’t show you any banners. I can’t show you any pros that I’ve coached as a head coach, or championships. I’ve never coached a game. I’ve never called a timeout. I just want you to believe in this.”

Collins made the pitch to Vic Law, a top-100 prospect from just south of Chicago, as Law was leaving the Welsh-Ryan court during an unofficial visit in the summer of 2013. Law was sold.

Others, however, questioned him. Why Northwestern? He heard it from high school teammates. What do you see in Northwestern? From AAU teammates. They have no culture. From fellow high-profile recruits. There’s no basketball presence there.

Law didn’t have evidence to refute them. Nonetheless, Collins’ phone rang on July 4. It was Law. Law committed. Collins had found his first dreamer. His first believer.

***

Months after Collins returned to Welsh-Ryan, months after his eyes climbed the bleachers, the gym again housed a late-night intruder. This time it was an 18-year-old kid from Indiana named Bryant McIntosh.

McIntosh, in town for a visit, wanted to shoot. Never mind that it was 10 o’clock at night. Never mind that all the gym’s entrances were locked. Never mind that coaches told him they weren’t allowed to let him in. McIntosh and his father, Scott, made a few calls, and when they arrived soon after, a single door happened to be unlocked. The hallways were pitch black, but the lights on the court happened to be on.

McIntosh shot for a good hour with Scott by his side, the two in constant conversation while he did. When the session wrapped up, Bryant paced to midcourt, and centered himself right on the purple “N-Cat” logo. Scott took a photo. Then Bryant’s eyes wandered. His gaze latched onto various parts of the gym’s interior, and turned him around, 360 degrees, awestruck. His mind wandered too. It conjured up the same sights and sounds that Collins’ had months earlier.

Collins didn’t know it yet, but he had himself another dreamer.

He found out in September when he and assistant coach Armon Gates sat opposite McIntosh in the high school senior’s home. McIntosh pulled two poker chips out of his pocket and slid them across the table. The first read “All,” the second “N.” McIntosh wasn’t just a dreamer. He, too, was a believer.

***

Exactly nine months into his tenure in Evanston, Chris Collins was all smiles — measured smiles, sure, but smiles more often than not. On Jan. 1, 2014, Collins’ team had a winning record heading into Big Ten play, and more importantly, the first-year coach had an impressive five-man recruiting class set to enroll next fall. Things were going swimmingly.

On Jan. 2, Wisconsin came to town.

At around 6:50 that night, Collins glanced up at the Welsh-Ryan scoreboard as he trudged back to his team’s locker room at halftime. It read Wisconsin 40, Northwestern 14. Man, he thought, we got a lot of work to do.

“You realized it was going to be hard,” Collins says now. “But that’s when it really smacked me in the face.”

Much of Collins’ first year was a smack in the face. The team finished 14-19. There was always an understanding that the rebuilding project, or rather building project, was going to take time. Collins, though, is hyper-competitive by nature. The losing, at times, wore on him.

He returned in year two with his first recruiting class, with McIntosh, Law and Scottie Lindsey, and with hope of progress. He saw it behind the scenes. He saw it early on. The Wildcats were 10-4 entering January.

On Jan. 4, Wisconsin came to town.

Northwestern lost, then lost in overtime at Michigan State. It fell at home to Illinois, then on a McIntosh miss at the buzzer at Michigan. It lost by two to D’Angelo Russell and Ohio State, then on a Dez Wells game-winning putback at Maryland. Six in a row. Purdue at home made seven. Tears became stone-faced dejection. Nebraska on the road, eight. Wisconsin again, nine. Michigan State again, this time by 24. Ten straight.

“We were putting everything on the line, and we just couldn’t win,” Collins says. “That was probably the hardest stretch of my coaching career. We didn’t win for six weeks. You come to practice every day, and you try to keep fighting … I mean, that’s hard.”

Having belief without evidence is one thing, but sustaining belief with a persistent lack of evidence is something else. Imbuing that belief in an entire team is extremely difficult.

But after the 10th straight loss, and after the ninth, and the first, and the seven in between, Collins would retreat back to his office to regroup. And if he sat at his desk, he’d see a picture frame that doesn’t hold a photo, but rather a list. In the left column are the names of Hall of Fame coaches; in the right column are their records in their first years: Mike Krzyzewski, 11-14. Dean Smith, 8-9. Jim Calhoun, 9-19. Eleven names in all. Eleven records under .500. Eleven names and records that helped keep the big picture in focus.

***

In the days after a crushing overtime loss to Michigan in the 2016 Big Ten tournament, questions began to flood Bryant McIntosh’s mind. The Wildcats had won 20 games, but a weak non-conference schedule kept them far away from the NCAA tournament and even the NIT. Collins ruled out the possibility of a third-tier postseason tournament. Some players weren’t happy. They wanted to keep playing.

In the aftermath, McIntosh came to a realization: I’m halfway through my career, and we haven’t even sniffed the tournament. His mind raced. He wondered aloud to his family: “Do you think I may never play in the NCAA tournament?”

McIntosh had been convinced 2015-16 would be the year. He believed. But Law underwent season-ending surgery on a torn labrum, senior center Alex Olah missed time with an injury, and the Wildcats won just one game against the top half of the Big Ten.

McIntosh doesn’t want to call the subsequent thoughts doubt. “I just questioned and wondered,” he says. Fortunately for all involved, his family had answers to the questions. They gave him two options, but really only one.

“Well you can sit here and worry about it. Or you can go to work.”

***

Ask McIntosh, ask Collins, ask anybody involved, and they’ll tell you the same thing: They recognized it this past summer. They recognized that something was different. Collins had spent three years cultivating a culture of work, of dedication, of desire, and of day-to-day intensity; all of those things reached new heights in 2016.

“The last thing that turns the corner when you’re changing a culture is what you guys see, the results on the floor,” Collins says. “The first thing to change is the way the guys work, how they invest in strength and conditioning, in extra film work, and coming in at night, and working out with the coaches. We were seeing all those things happen.”

And when he boarded the team bus after a gut-wrenching loss to Butler in November, he looked past the heartbreak and to something else he now recognized: That this team could be the team. That culture was about to start yielding wins.

He was right. The Wildcats won 16 of their next 19 games. They sat at 18-4, and 7-2 in the Big Ten after a thorough dispatching of Indiana in late January. They were a lock.

But then the NCAA tournament talk intensified. Pressure heightened. Pre-practice media availability sessions, which at times last year were attended by zero professional reporters, were now overflowing with television cameras and repetitive tournament-related questions.

It was as if the dreams became too real. Northwestern lost two in a row, then lost Lindsey, its leading scorer, for three weeks to mononucleosis. The tailspin eventually became five defeats in seven. The bubble loomed.

After the fifth loss, Collins, who had been sidestepping the elephant in the room and urging his team to avoid discussion of the tournament, changed course. He came into a team meeting the following day and got right to the point. “Guys, there is pressure,” he said. “And anything good in life involves handling pressure. We’re not going to avoid it anymore. We’re not going to skirt around it.”

“Sometimes,” he later said, “when you’re trying to do something really hard, it takes exceptional things.”

Two days later, on the most famous night in Northwestern basketball history, Nathan Taphorn wound up and unleashed a 90-foot pass. Dererk Pardon punched the program’s first-ever ticket to the Big Dance. The Play set up a glorious Sunday afternoon, a day of celebration on national TV against Purdue.

The Play set up three hours that would crystallize the dream Collins first had on that serene Monday night in April almost four years prior.

***

At 5:58 on the evening of Jan. 15, 2014, two Northwestern students boarded a shuttle to Welsh-Ryan Arena to see their school play No. 4 Michigan State. They were two of four along for the ride. They arrived at the under-16 timeout, showed their student IDs at the gym’s entrance, and walked directly to the front row of the student section. It was less than half full.

Just over two years later, around 1:30 p.m. on March 4, 2017, a line began to form. Then it grew. Tipoff was still two hours away.

At 2 p.m., doors opened, and students bounded through them, up the steps, into the concourse, and out onto the wooden bleachers. They continued to trickle in at 2:17. They began to flow at 2:33.

They came dressed in capes and in Jamaican bobsled uniforms, in bear outfits and Uncle Sam hats, in pink headbands and eccentric wigs. They came in colorful onesies and in sports bras, as Sasquatch and as Left Shark, in striped overalls and hard hats. One would eventually undress to reveal a Speedo. And of course all of them, including Speedo Guy, came in purple.

At 2:57, they started to squeeze. They climbed over legs and shoulders to find the odd square foot of standing room. They stood on top of bleachers and in front of them to double capacity. They crammed into overflow seating. They disobeyed the orders of scrambling ushers and stood on their tiptoes in all four corners of the concourse. Anything for a spot. Anything for a glimpse of Northwestern basketball.

“We can’t find anywhere to sit!” exclaimed a student accustomed to strolling into one of the two sections behind the baskets five minutes before tip. He never found one. Others were turned away, sent to the football team’s meeting room next door to watch the television feed via a projector.

And then came the noise. At 3:24, when Northwestern took the court for warmups. At 3:30, when the CBS broadcast went live. At 3:31, when Jim Nantz couldn’t even hear himself over the din.

“You ever seen it like this before?” a father asked his son near the railing of the lower bowl. “Never,” son responded. “Have you?” Dad shook his head.

The pandemonium, the uninhibited thunderous roar in the buildup to the opening tip, wasn’t just unlike anything Welsh-Ryan had seen before. It matched all but a few college basketball gameday atmospheres around the country. It was unfathomable to hear it in a gym that has so often over the years been half empty.

“Is this the same Welsh-Ryan?” wondered one passerby.

“Am I dreaming?” wondered another.

He wasn’t. But only because somebody else did.

“Look, it was a special day,” Collins said. “That crowd, it’s everything I ever dreamed of here.”

It was precisely what he envisioned 1,434 days ago, the building packed to the roof, the student support maniacal, older fans soaking up the scene in amazement. Maybe he thought back to that night in early April, with his wife and children by his side. Maybe he didn’t.

Or maybe, as he took one pregame moment to scan the crowd before zoning in on the task at hand, he stumbled upon a row of seven shirtless students on the far baseline, their chests painted, each with a purple letter. The first had an F. The second an I. N. A-L-L-Y.

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