Here’s a familiar scene. A heralded freshman joins a veteran-laden team. His older teammates are a bit jaded by all the hype and media attention that their younger counterpart receives, but they’re also intrigued with what the young star can do on the floor. Eventually the team is won over by all the potential embedded in their new teammate, and the season-long process of integration takes its first step. This scene usually takes place with elite freshmen and the blue-chip college programs at which they enroll, but at some level, a similar story also involves a four-star recruit in Evanston, Illinois. Vic Law is not the most talented freshman in the Big Ten this season, but he might be the most important. His ability to succeed may change the trajectory of the perennially bottom-dwelling Northwestern program, head coach Chris Collins’ career, and the future pecking order of the Big Ten.
The first thing you need to know about Law is that he doesn’t look like a typical Northwestern basketball player. The Chicago native is a 6’7”, 185 lb. string bean, but he’s remarkably athletic with a versatile game that makes him a threat from both the outside or in the mid-range. In short, he looks like a top-100 prospect. Compare him with several recent Northwestern stars such as Drew Crawford, John Shurna and Kevin Coble, and the gap in their upside becomes even more apparent. No offense to those former players, but they were successful Wildcats as much from their basketball IQ and guile than from their athleticism and talent. During former head coach Bill Carmody’s tenure, that was the formula that successfully got the Wildcats as close to making the NCAA Tournament as they had ever been. But eventually, that approach simply wasn’t able to get over the hump, and a coaching change was made.
Collins was brought in because of his ties to the greater Chicago area and 13-year role as an assistant coach at Duke — a private university similar to Northwestern in its academic rigor but an ocean apart in basketball. The hope was that the 40-year old coach could replicate Mike Krzyzewski’s blueprint of turning an elite academic school into a successful program. But basketball is a players’ game, and even Coach K needed to lure a prep All-American named Johnny Dawkins to reset the Duke program’s trajectory, and that’s exactly what Law could represent to Collins. By the end of his four years at Duke, Dawkins had won 95 games and led the Blue Devils to the National Championship game (losing to Louisville). That expectation would be egregiously unfair to ask of Law, but a successful first couple of years as a Wildcat will signal to future high-level recruits that a commitment to Collins and Northwestern does not mean eschewing the chase for conference titles and deep NCAA Tournament runs.