Northwestern University Athletics
The 1999-2000 Men's Basketball Season in Review
3/30/2000 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 30, 2000
One wouldn't think that a 5-25 basketball season and 0-16 in the Big Ten regular season would have a lot of positives to write about, but the 1999-2000 Northwestern Wildcat men's basketball team is the exception to the rule.
Faced with playing in the toughest conference in the country with the youngest team in the nation, head coach Kevin O'Neill threw his kittens to the wolves in his third season at the helm of the Wildcat program. The results were sometimes hard to swallow, but more often than not, the play of the young team was very encouraging for the future of Wildcat hoops.
"I knew when I got here three years ago, that our third season was going to be tough," said O'Neill. "We could see that we were going to lose a lot of veterans and an All-American (Evan Eschmeyer) in the middle. When the only two upperclassmen we had left the team in the preseason, that put our young guys in an unfair position. That said, I believe we got a whole lot better as the season went along, and will continue to get better next year. We still won't have a senior day, but we can plan around our nucleus of players going into this offseason. We had only five players to plan around last offseason."
Underclassman played 99.97% of the team's minutes in 1999-2000, with junior walk-on Jeff Eschmeyer's two minutes the only time by an upperclassman. Despite the inexperience, some Wildcats showed talent that has not been seen in Evanston in many years, maybe ever. Next season, seven letterwinners return, including four starters. Combine them with a solid recruiting class, and NU basketball is in far better shape than the summer of '99, when only three letterwinners returned from an NIT team.
Freshman Ben Johnson became just the fourth Wildcat to lead NU in scoring for a season as a true freshman, averaging 11.6 points per game. The last freshman to accomplish the feat was Cedric Neloms in 1991-92, while the other two players to lead the team in their first year were Billy McKinney in 1973-74 and Jim Stack in 1979-80. Johnson also led the team in minutes played, averaging 32.9 minutes per game.
Another freshman who showed immense promise was center Aaron Jennings. In a five-game span from Feb. 5-19, Jennings averaged 12.6 points and 5.2 rebounds in 26.4 minutes. Compare that with his first three Big Ten outings (1.7 pts, 1.3 rebs, 7.7 min.) and it's obvious A.J. matured in the middle for the 'Cats. At Penn State on Feb. 16, he scored 12 points and recorded a career-high nine boards. Against Rice on Feb. 9, he tallied 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting. It was the second straight game that A.J. set a career high in points and led the Wildcats in scoring. Against Indiana on Feb. 5, he scored 14 points and grabbed a career-high seven boards. All of his points and six of those boards were recorded in the second half.
Other freshmen who showed tremendous promise were Jason Burke and Winston Blake. Burke played in every Big Ten game, starting six, and averaged nearly 19 minutes per Big Ten contest. He set career highs in points (14), blocks (2), steals (3) and minutes (32) at Michigan on Jan. 19. Blake showed flashes of a big-time scoring threat in playing every game, usually coming off the bench and providing a much-needed scoring punch to the offense. He led the team twice in scoring despite averaging just 15 minutes per contest.
In all, of the six true freshmen on this year's team, five of those had equal or higher points-per-game averages during the Big Ten season than they did in the nonconference slate.
Among the sophomores, the play of Tavaras Hardy stood out. `T' recorded four double-doubles during the year, three of those in the conference season. Hardy scored a career-high 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds against Michigan in an overtime loss on Feb. 26. On Feb. 16, he scored a team-high 16 points and pulled down 10 rebounds against Penn State.
Hardy has also excelled defensively against the best power forwards in the conference, holding Purdue's Brian Cardinal to seven points on 2-of-11 shooting and Penn State's Jarrett Stephens to six points, also on 2-of-11 shooting from the floor.
At Ohio State on Feb. 23, Hardy set a career rebounding high for the second straight game with 12 boards. Against Illinois on Feb. 19, Hardy had 11 boards. From Feb. 16-26, he averaged 11 rebounds per contest.
The biggest surprise of the season was the play of Collier Drayton. Drayton saw action in every game, starting starting 19, after playing just one game last year. He scored a career-high 10 points vs. Rice on Feb. 9 and scored a then career-high nine points at Iowa on Jan. 5, with seven boards. He also limited Iowa guard Dean Oliver (14.7 ppg entering game) to three points on 1-of-8 shooting.
