Watch the video to learn more about why Chicago State is no longer the worst team in college basketball. Be sure to check out The Touchback on YouTube for more videos.
Northwestern recently beat No. 1 ranked Purdue. Almost two weeks later, the Wildcats lost to Chicago State. If we use transitive property, this means the Cougars are the best college basketball team in the country. Of course, it doesn’t work like that.
This was certainly a far cry from 2017 when Northwestern annihilated Chicago State 96-31. The Wildcats actually led 55-8 at halftime. Eight is not enough when it comes to points in a half of college basketball. And even though six years is a lifetime in collegiate athletics, it is still impressive.
What the victory does mean is that Chicago State is no longer the worst team in college basketball. That may not sound like much to you or me, but for a program that has three winning seasons in 39 years of DI basketball, that simple reality is everything. Here’s why things are finally looking up for the Cougars.
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Chicago State is NOT the worst team in college basketball
One of the first videos I did here in 2020 was a deep dive into the history of Chicago State basketball being terrible. The production quality isn’t great but it’s a fascinating look at the sport’s perennial cellar dwellers.
The Cliff’s Notes version of that tale is that no team in college basketball has come close to matching the Cougars’ haplessness. In 39 seasons, the team is 291-833. We aren’t including this season’s record in the total.
To put those 833 losses into context, Kentucky has accumulated 749 losses and the Wildcats began play in 1903, some 81 seasons before Chicago State would move up to DI.
The sheer volume of losses doesn’t tell the entire story, however. The team has three winning seasons over the span and only 11 with ten wins or more. The majority of any fleeting success came under Bob Hallberg during the program’s first three seasons at the D1 level. If you remove those, well things get really bleak.
We’re talking one winning season in 34 years. On 31 occasions, they finished with 19 or more losses. Even at their best, Chicago State has been bad but not even memorably so. The Cougars have embraced a much more low-key level of losing.
Things appear to have finally turned a corner.
Good times for Chicago State
When Chicago State hired Gerald Gillion, no one thought much of it. Then again, no one pays much attention to the team’s coaching hires in general. Apart from that time they brought in Craig Hodges as head coach shortly after he had been blackballed from the NBA.
Gillion came in saying a lot of the right things. Then again, every coach comes in thinking they are the one who is going to make a difference. The Cougar meatgrinder has pulverized them all. Going 7-25 in his first season at the helm made most people think it was more of the same for the team.
The task at hand wasn’t about to get any easier with the program set to leave the WAC at the end of 2022 for the nomadic life of a college basketball independent. This is actually the Cougars’ third separate stint on the Indies, but the situation was far different from their last go around in the late 2000s when there were several other schools in the same boat.
In 2022, Hartford was the only other college basketball independent, and they were there as part of their transition down to DIII. Putting together a schedule is no easy feat since no team in a conference wants to play an extra road game during conference play.
Despite these obstacles, Chicago State put together a respectable campaign in 2022-23, winning 11 games, a significant achievement for the Cougars. That being said, the record looks far better on the surface than in reality. That’s because of those six wins, four came against non-DI schools and two were against Hartford. Progress is progress though.
Ahead of this season, Gillion and Chicago State made headlines when twins Matt and Ryan Bewley announced they were going to play for the Cougars. The former five-star recruits had spent time with Overtime Elite before deciding to try their hand at college.
The pair has also been coached by Gillion on the AAU circuit. There can be no denying the impact this was going to have on the program. These were by and far and away the best recruits to sign with Chicago State. It was going to change everything for the Cougars. Until the NCAA stepped in.
Apparently, the governing body did not take too kindly to the fact the twins were paid by Overtime Elite and ruled ineligible before they ever played a game. Talk about being a buzzkill. Instead of suiting up for Chicago State, the twins have been fighting the NCAA in court with no resolution in sight.
It hasn’t been all bad news for the Cougars. In December, the school announced it would be joining the Northeastern Conference in 2024. Even though the NEC has experienced a significant amount of turnover in recent times, it was still a welcome invitation for Chicago State. When the WAC decided to focus on the Southwest, the school had been unable to find a home for its sports.
Being in a conference, and one that actually needs them as opposed to the school needing the conference, is a step in the right direction. It was the first time they’ve been wanted since being booted from the Mid-Continent Conference for having no oversight of the athletic program. Seriously, the Cougars were just asking random kids on campus if they wanted to play a sport.
Being in the NEC offers Chicago State much needed stability, especially when it comes to scheduling. This year, the Cougars will spend the final two months playing random road games across the USA with a non-DI fixture at home sprinkled in. The program can’t even find games after the middle of February which is suboptimal. And there is no pathway to the NCAA tournament should they even be good, not that this has been much of a concern.
All of that brings us to the upset of Northwestern, the school’s first victory over a ranked opponent in history. This feels like a turning point. Everything seems like it is finally on a sustainable, upward trajectory.
There is also something important to stress here. The future of Chicago State isn’t some dominant, 20-year run that seems them transform into the second coming of Gonzaga. And that’s okay.
Simply being a program that can finish with a winning record every once in a while, knock off a big school and maybe one day find itself as a 16 seed in the NCAA tournament would be a huge turnaround for the Cougars.
And this is why we should celebrate the fact Chicago State is finally not the worst team in college basketball. Being school number 304 out of 360 may not seem like much to the average person. But for Chicago State, it is everything.
Getting to this point required a lot of work for the Cougars, most of which has gone underappreciated and unseen. I don’t think any of us know what the future holds for Chicago State basketball, but it looks like things have changed for the better.
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