HOW BAD IS NORTHERN ILLINOIS BASKETBALL?

For the women, mediocrity is the regular choice.

The men can't get out of DeKalb fast enough.  "Five NIU men’s basketball players have entered the transfer portal."  The way this transfer portal works, if nobody beams you up, you retain your scholarship on your current team.  Not that the team performed all that well, they failed to qualify for the conference tournament in Cleveland.

If all five players choose to leave NIU, the Huskies will be without three former starters and their sixth man for the 2024-2025 season. Head coach Rashon Burno will be forced to retool NIU’s roster around junior guard David Coit.

I'm not sure how transferring off a bad team wrecks a team.  "Underachieving Huskies wrecked by transfer portal."

While NIU men’s basketball has never been harmed as badly as it has this season by the transfer portal, losing talent via the portal has been an issue for the Huskies for the past few seasons.

After the 2022-23 season, the Huskies’ lost three key contributors in guard Kaleb Thornton, forward Anthony Crump and guard Darweshi Hunter. Thornton was the Huskies’ top assist man, Crump led the Huskies in rebounds and Hunter was NIU’s most efficient three-point shooter.

All three players left NIU for rival MAC schools after 2022-23.

The Huskies won just nine games in the 2021-22 season and were able to retain Williams, Crump, Thornton and Hunter but lost guard Trendon Hankerson. Hankerson started all 30 games for the Huskies and finished second in the MAC in steals per game in 2021-22 before leaving for the MAC-rival University of Akron Zips.

Perhaps we're seeing that there are no bad brigades, only bad brigadiers.

During NIU men’s basketball head coach Rashon Burno’s three years at NIU, the Huskies are yet to have an overall winning record or a conference winning record. The closest they came was in 2022-23, finishing 13-19 overall and 9-9 in the MAC.

While the Huskies went just 11-20 overall and 5-13 in the MAC last season, I would argue that this roster was actually the most talented team of the Burno era, but underachieved.

"Most talented" by Mid-American standards generally isn't saying much, is it?