The REAL season begins Wednesday

the slurping of Northwestern basketball is in full effect. andy katz is mentioning them every chance he gets, and now USA Today is jumping on board the bandwagon.

not surprisingly, i'm going to wait a little longer before declaring this season a success. specifically, i want to see NU's record on January 31. i will posit that between now and then, the Wildcats could very reasonably go from 10-1 to 11-10.

take a good look at the schedule. it's back-loaded with the weaker teams. i'm excited about six games against PSU, IU and Iowa, but we have to wait until February 7 for the first of those. although Michigan and Illinois are struggling a bit right now, the Wildcats still have to go on the road for both of those early matchups.

on the plus side, Illinois's second-best win (after the stirring comeback at Clemson) is only a home win against so-so Vanderbilt. and they have some bad losses, including Utah and Bradley back-to-back in Las Vegas last month. however, Northwestern has struggled mightily in Champaign for the last decade; they haven't won there since the 1999 NIT season. they've averaged less than 50 ppg since then, and they scored only 37 in each of the last two trips to U of I's building.

at Christmas last year Northwestern had two losses, one road win, and had defeated teams with an average RPI of 220. right now NU has one loss, one road win, and has defeated teams with an average RPI of 180. last year's team started off the Big Ten season 0-4. while it's just one of 18 conference games, tomorrow night's result will go a long way in determining the fate of this season.