2015-16 Pre-Season Northwestern Basketball Expectations

This post is another part of our series on Pre-Season expectations as per the world of kenpom.com. In this post we focus on Northwestern's expectations.

The first bar chart below projects NU's 2015-16 win totals for the entire season.  It is worth noting that these data are based on the 30 game schedule listed on kenpom.  There is an additional game (either Kansas St or Missouri) that is not listed on the schedule as the opponent is TBD.  We project that NU would be a narrow favorite for that game so you can consider the below bar chart to be conservative.

The good news is that NU is expected to have a winning season.   That would make this the first winning season under CCC and puts NU as a likely NIT team with an outside shot at the NCAAs.  It's not where anyone wants to be, but at least it would be a step back for the program to where it was when Johnny Shurna was in the house.

The following chart summarizes the pre-season forecast for  NU's B1G conference slate.  NU finished 6-12 last year so the most likely outcome of 8-10 would be a step forward for NU and set a new high water mark for the CCC era.