Northwestern University Athletics
Connections Abound Between 1997 and 2015 Wildcats
3/17/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
By Kalyn Kahler
Northwestern Athletic Communications
When Northwestern women's basketball last made the NCAA tournament in 1997, the bid arrived quietly in Evanston without a selection show celebration. No band, no cheerleaders, no party. The team kept it simple and huddled on the couch at junior guard Amber DeWall's apartment to eat pizza and quietly watch the selection. Even head coach Don Perrelli stayed home.
The 'Cats were snubbed from the NCAA tournament the year before and the team sat on the bubble with a 17-10 record, (worse than their 21-10 record in `96) and a first-round loss in the Big Ten tournament. The coach couldn't bear the thought of a repeat of the previous season's heartbreak.
"I wasn't sure that we were going to be selected and I didn't want to be disappointed again," Perrelli remembered. "I didn't want them to be disappointed so I felt it was better if we just let the committee do whatever they were going to do and we would just not be together. If it came to be, it came to be."
Nearly 20 years later, the Wildcats are back in the tournament and this time, selection night was met with loud celebration. The players passed around popcorn, waved purple pom poms and took selfies as they waited to receive their tournament bid at the N Club. Joining them in anticipation was a huge crowd of family, alumni, fans, media, band, cheerleaders and head coach Joe McKeown.
Unlike the 1997 team, a 23-8 record and a top-25 national ranking meant this was no bubble team. "We felt pretty confident, getting a double bye in the Big Ten tournament and finishing as a ranked team in March, there is a sense of relief," McKeown said.
Prior to joining Northwestern for the 2008-09 season, McKeown spent 19 seasons at George Washington University, where he experienced the crushing disappointment of coming close to making the tournament. "I've had TV trucks at my house and everybody excited and then we didn't make it, it's deflating," McKeown said. "It's a good feeling (this year) but I understand how Don [Perrelli] felt because it just really hurts."
On Friday, seventh-seed Northwestern will face 10th-seeded Arkansas in Waco, Texas. In its last tournament appearance, NU entered as a No. 12 seed and played a fifth-seeded George Washington team coached by none other than McKeown.
"It's bizarre, it's surreal," McKeown said. "When I saw we drew Northwestern that year, I thought, 'Oh, that's a scary team, they ran a flex offense and they could shoot a lot of threes, they could score a lot of points.'"
The 1996-97 team led the nation in three-point field goal shooting (41.6 percent) and averaged a school-record 79.5 points per game.
Although McKeown and Perrelli should have been enemies, on the night before the first-round tournament game, McKeown found himself in the locker room chatting with the legendary Northwestern coach, an old friend from the days of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. McKeown even gave his opponent a ride back to the hotel, "It was different back then," he laughed.
"When we found out we were playing each other, we touched base. But once it got to the game time, I couldn't remember who he was," Perrelli joked.
At the Smith Center in Washington D.C. on March 15, 1997, Northwestern led at halftime, 28-26, prompting McKeown to return to the drawing board for his game plan. "We were really worried at halftime," he said. "So we changed everything we did defensively."
McKeown's Colonials went on to win the game, 61-46, and started a tournament run that would end in the Elite Eight, his best career NCAA tournament finish, but getting past Northwestern in the first round was no easy feat. "[That Northwestern team] gave everybody fits in the Big Ten. They were a hard matchup," he said.
A couple years later, McKeown still talked about that NU team. He'll never forget a conversation with 2000 Olympic Women's Basketball coach Nell Fortner when her national team practiced at GW.
"She said to me one day, `What do you think if we ran the Northwestern flex offense that Don Perrelli does?'" McKeown remembered. "I said, `I think you'll do pretty well.' They ended up winning the gold medal so they did pretty well. That's the respect that people have for Coach Perrelli."
Under Perrelli's leadership, the `Cats made the NCAA tournament five times, "Don had a great tradition here and that's what you really want to build on," McKeown said. This season's team has already accomplished just that.
The 1996-97 team entered the tournament winners of seven of their last nine games. This year's Northwestern team heads to Waco as winners of nine of its last 11 contests. The Wildcats enter the NCAA tournament with 23 wins and earned a berth to the Big Ten tournament semifinal round for the first time in program history. "They are taking everything one step further than we did," Katrina (Hannaford) Christie, a center on the 1996-97 squad said.
Following the disappointment of missing the tournament in 1996, Northwestern found success in the WNIT, making it to the third round. Michele Ratay, a senior co-captain with Christie and an honorable mention All-American, said her teammates carried that momentum through to the next season.
"That was a springboard to our senior year," Ratay said. "We had success in the WNIT and we had a lot of fun, but the NCAA tournament was our goal and we put a little bit of pressure on ourselves."
Sophomore first-team All-Big Ten selection Nia Coffey found herself in a similar situation following last season's WNIT third-round loss. "Compared from last year to this year, it's crazy," Coffey said. "We knew we had the potential to do it and we put in the hard work and it really paid off. I'm just so proud because we actually did what we said we were going to do and we still have more to go."
For Christie, a member of the last team to wear Northwestern purple at the Big Dance, it's been a special season to reconnect with the program.
"It is really cool. It's goosebumps cool," she said. "It brings up so many memories. My whole family was watching a game on BTN this season and Lisa Byington, my former teammate, is doing the commentary. Then all of a sudden the picture of my team is up on the screen and my kids are like `Oh my gosh!' Little things like that are fun."
As the team prepares for the NCAA tournament, McKeown hopes his players can take inspiration from the 1996-97 team. "They have walked in your shoes and proven that you can be successful here in the Big Ten, playing the NCAA tournament and doing it at Northwestern," he said. "They were trying to sprint from class to practice, they were sitting on a bus for five hours coming back from Michigan and trying to study and still competing at the highest level."
Although Perrelli is long retired, he still watches all Northwestern games on TV and he'll be watching Friday, shouting at his TV screen and remembering that last tournament game against McKeown. "When you see Coach McKeown you tell him I was asking for him," he laughed. "Sometimes I second-guess him."
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