ROSEMONT, Ill. - It is the question that will follow Northwestern basketball all season long. After being so close to the NCAA tournament last season, a berth that would have been the first in school history, will the Wildcats finally get over the hump.

Northwestern, to its credit, isn’t hiding from the question. The players and coaches recognize the intrigue, especially after last season.

“We just have to make sure it doesn’t overwhelm us and consume us and make sure it’s not our only goal of the year,” senior forward Kevin Coble said. “Because there’s a lot that goes on before.”

For decades, Northwestern has been the Charlie Brown of the Big Ten and an afterthought in college basketball. Hardly ever competitive and usually languishing in the bottom of a tradition-laden league, last season began a rebirth of sorts. Every other time Northwestern had even flirted with the NCAAs, it was with a team full of seniors making one final run.

That’s why this time is different. Much of Bill Carmody’s team from last year returns a year more experienced and, for the first time, knowing what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble instead of being Big Ten tournament fodder for a top team.

“We’d lose them all,” Carmody said of the past. “So it was nice. Last year, we got some big guys, freshmen who are all big kids who played, 7-foot, 6-11, 6-8. So our rebounding, we have to kill the boards. This year, the backboard, we have to see what the backboard is like.”

Carmody is talking about his front line of sophomores in 7-foot Kyle Rowley, 6-11 Luka Mirkovic and 6-8 John Shurna. Mix those three with Coble and junior guard Michael Thompson and that offers a core, at least, of players who have experience and skill for the Wildcats.

Five or Northwestern’s top six scorers return, including four starters in Kevin Coble,
Thompson, Shurna and Rowley.

That group also recognizes how close they were to actually earning that elusive NCAA bid and how it happened. A couple of wins over Purdue, Penn State, Illinois, Michigan or Ohio State last season - all five of those losses were by five points or less - would have sent Northwestern to the NCAAs instead of to the NIT and a first-round loss at Tulsa, 68-59, that finished the Wildcats season at 17-14.

Northwestern had never been in that situation before, so in some ways, they weren’t sure how to react. In fact, even seven months later, Coble is convinced two or three more wins and the Wildcats could have been a single-digit NCAA seed.

Now, it becomes a motivating factor and a learning tool.

“We knew that we just did what we could,” Coble said. “We couldn’t change those games or do anything about it. We learn from it and make sure it’s something we make sure doesn’t happen again.

“I just think we weren’t in that position before, to go to an NCAA tournament. But we got the experience last year and we can draw on that.”

After all, life as the only major conference team not to make the NCAA tournament has to end sometime.

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com. Or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.