The Five Greatest Northwestern Basketball Teams of All Time

When people talk about the greatest college basketball teams of all time, they mention Duke, Kentucky, UCLA and several other historically great programs. The term “blue blood” refers to the elite programs of college basketball who consistently win no matter the obstacles. Mike Krzyzewski took his Blue Devils to 13 Final Fours across five decades.

However, Northwestern’s blood couldn’t be further from the coveted cobalt blue. NU has made the NCAA Tournament three times in the tournament’s nearly 90-year history. Here’s a look at that troubled history.​

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The Northwestern Purple’s first men’s basketball season was in 1905, when it went 2-2 under Coach Thomas Holland in the Western Conference. Its first winning season was in 1913, when it went 14-4 under first-year coach Dennis Grady (Grady also served as Northwestern’s football coach that same year).

Following Grady’s departure, Northwestern endured a string of losing seasons until 1928, when Dutch Lonborg began his 23-year tenure as NU’s coach. Lonborg inherited the Northwestern Wildcats, who played in the newly created Big Ten. He went 12-5 in his first season, then won the Big Ten Conference Championship in the 1931 season with a 16-1 overall record and 11-1 conference record. He won the conference championship again in 1933, tying Ohio State with a 10-2 Big Ten record.

Lonborg’s 23 years at Northwestern were characterized by winning, as he accumulated 237 victories during his time in Evanston. Unfortunately for Lonborg, his teams are too old to have stats or game logs, so the 1931 and 1933 Wildcats, the only Northwestern men’s basketball teams to have ever won the Big Ten, are honorable mentions for the greatest Wildcat teams of all time.

Side note: Also deserving recognition is the legendary football alumnus Otto Graham, who came to Northwestern on a basketball scholarship and made an All-American team in his junior and senior seasons of 1943 and 1944.

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Nonetheless, since 1947, the first year for…

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Publish date : 2026-07-02 12:58:00

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