Looking ahead: Northwestern inches closer to postseason promise

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Ask your average sports fan to name the Greater Chicagoland area’s most ignominious loser, and he or she will almost certainly offer up the Chicago Cubs. Fair enough. The Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, and 1908 was an extremely long time ago. The lore of their losing is mythical, from the Billy Goat to Steve Bartman, and only adds to their fame.

But this is an incorrect answer. The correct one, as most good college basketball fans — and any Northwestern alum — would know, is the Northwestern men’s basketball team. Frankly, it’s not even close.

However long ago 1908 was, it’s a shorter time frame than “never.” Which, of course, was the last time the Wildcats earned entry into the NCAA tournament. Never.

Chris Collins has Northwestern pointed in the right direction, but is 2016-17 the season the Wildcats finally break through with an NCAA tournament berth? Jerry Lai/USA TODAY Sports

Comparing this task to winning a World Series is almost laughable; the latter is orders of magnitude more difficult than the former. Northwestern is a charter member of the Big Ten, one of the oldest, biggest and richest conferences in college athletics. The NCAA tournament was launched in 1939. Division I college athletics was (more or less) created in 1948. The tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. That a member of the Big Ten has gone this long without once slipping rear-side backwards into even a single NCAA tournament is utterly, unbelievably bonkers. No matter how many times we think about it — or how many offseason previews of Northwestern we write — it never gets less crazy.

Which is why, as always, no matter how …

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