| Sports Illustrated has called him the best offensive coach in college basketball, and during the 2001-02 season SI’s college basketball writer voted him one of the 15 best coaches in the college game. That list included only one other Big Ten coach -- Michigan State’s Tom Izzo.
His Division I peers have voted him as one of the five coaches they would most like to see give a clinic.
There is no doubt about it -- Northwestern’s Bill Carmody has established himself as one of the stars in the college coaching profession.
“I want my guys at Northwestern to understand how great of an opportunity it is to play college basketball,” he said when he was introduced to the Northwestern family in September 2000, “and that if they work hard every day how much can be accomplished when they approach the game in the right way.”
If there were questions about Carmody’s coaching ability when he first arrived in Evanston, he has put them to rest. The program has undergone a massive transformation under his direction -- from 5-25 in 1999-2000 (the season before his arrival) to 11-19 in his first season and then 16-13 last season, the most wins by an NU team since 1982-83 (18). The improvement has been just as dramatic in Big Ten play, from 0-16 in 1999-2000 to 3-13 in 2000-01 and then 7-9 last season. The seven conference wins came against seven different teams and marked the best total since 1983-84.
Bill Carmody’s impact at Northwestern was immediate. Inheriting a team that had won just five games overall and went winless in Big Ten play in 1999-2000, Carmody instituted the offensive system that brought so much success at Princeton, where he had spent the previous 18 seasons (including the last four as head coach). As the 2000-01 campaign wore on and the players began to feel more comfortable, the dividends began paying out.
The Wildcats ended the regular season with an 8-5 non-conference record -- including a veteran Iona team (69-67) that won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) title and nationally ranked Southern California (63-61) -- and recorded three wins in their final six Big Ten games.
In the process, Northwestern learned the values Carmody considers essential to good basketball. The Wildcats set a school record by draining 202 three-point field goals. According to Stats, Inc., they finished fourth in the country with an assist-to-field goal ratio of .680 (423 assists on 622 baskets). Northwestern also finished with a 1.04 assist-to-turnover ratio, a significant improvement from 1999-2000 when the ratio was 0.76. And the Wildcats committed 23 fewer turnovers than their opponents, a far cry from 1999-2000 when they committed 83 more.
Carmody became head coach at Princeton prior to the 1996-97 season, replacing the legendary Pete Carril after spending 14 years learning the system as an assistant. During his four-year tenure as head coach, Carmody guided the Tigers to an overall record of 92-25 (.786) and an Ivy League mark of 50-6 (.893), and took them to the postseason each year. He led the Tigers to a 24-4 record in his first season, the third-best first year mark for a Division I head coach in 30 years. Carmody followed that up with an even better sophomore campaign when he directed Princeton to a 27-2 record, a Top 10 national ranking and the second round of the 1998 NCAA Tournament
A native of Spring Lake, N.J., Carmody joined the Princeton staff as an assistant coach in 19 | 
