Let it serve notice to the great young high school prospects located within driving distance of Chicago’s Big Ten team: Northwestern is seeking out local talent to anchor Chris Collins’ early recruiting efforts. This isn’t a surprise, or a revelatory tweak in recruiting strategy borne of a recent coaching switch. It’s just common sense. Northwestern needs to plant its stakes in the heart of the Chicago and larger Illinois talent pool, and Collins is already off and running.

In its own unique way, the geographical focus of their search for talent has become a major element of their recruiting pitch. Collins and his assistants are selling the opportunity to represent the local community by staying home and playing for the local Big Ten program. 2015 PF Evan Boudreaux understands the significance of playing college basketball in his own backyard, and after receiving a scholarship offer in May, the option of pursuing that local spotlight is officially open.

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Every team that Northwestern played this year knew how to beat them: score early, take out NU’s two most versatile players, then milk the clock and do not allow the Wildcats to run their fast-paced offense. Easier said than done, obviously. The difference between the rest of the teams and North Carolina: the Tar Heels executed, beating NU 11-4 in the NCAA semifinals Friday afternoon.

North Carolina scored seven of the first eight goals, just as they did on Feb. 22, when they beat NU for the first time this season. They neutralized NU senior stars Erin Fitzgerald and Taylor Thornton, who combined for zero goals, zero assists, zero draw controls, zero caused turnovers, and one ground ball. With a seven-goal lead and 12 minutes left in the game, North Carolina beat NU at its own game: playing keep away for minutes at a time to drain the clock.

NU’s streak of eight straight appearances in the NCAA Championship game ended with this loss in the semifinals. The fact that a loss in the semifinals is so shocking for NU lacrosse is a testament to its dominance of the sport over the better part of the last decade.

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The final SportsNight episode of the year aired Thursday night, and it marked the end of the first chapter of a tremendous partnership between SportsNight and InsideNU. SportsNight will take a break for the summer, but we’ll be back on the show to provide analysis in the fall, and we’ll hopefully have some new features to debut once the 2013-2014 school year starts up. For the final episode of the year, we had Kevin Trahan on to talk about football and football recruiting. As always, check out NNNTV.org and follow NNN Sports on Twitter at @nnnsports.

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Revenge is not often a motivating factor for the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team.

This is mostly because revenge requires a loss, and the Wildcats never have many of those. However, No. 2 NU (19-2) will have an opportunity for revenge Friday night, when they take on No. 3 North Carolina (16-3) in the NCAA semifinals.

Then-No. 1 NU lost to the then-No. 5 Tar Heels, 11-8, on Feb. 22 this season. That loss sparked an 11-game win streak for the Cats.

It was a slow start in that game that doomed the team from the beginning. The Tar Heels scored seven goals in the first 15 minutes of action while holding the Cats to just one. Despite only two losses this year, slow starts have plagued NU, who has had to generate more second-half comebacks than years past.

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Simple press releases are boring to look at, everybody knows it. Northwestern avoided that problem earlier this week by releasing its nonconference basketball schedule not with some sterilized news brief, but a video interview featuring running commentary from coach Chris Collins and assistants Tavaras Hardy and Patrick Baldwin. Together the three coaches added terse but insightful analysis about each upcoming game, even the putatively pushover pastry fluff early in the schedule, and in the end what you got was a visually engaging product far more interesting than anything the great sports communication staff over at NUSports.com could have whipped up on Microsoft word.

We also have our own thoughts on the nonconference schedule, and for today’s debate topic, we’re ready to expand those thoughts into a (hopefully) coherent long form description of our “favorite” contest and why. If this concept sounds murky and indistinct, that’s because it is. On May 24, more than five months away from opening tip, precise analysis about the upcoming season is almost impossible. This is a reflection of our early thoughts on the nonconference schedule, and the most personally appealing games listed on it, and nothing else. Agree? Disagree? Think this is a dumb debate topic in the first place? Let us know in the comments section.

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Right from the start, Warren Long had an important disclaimer to get off his chest.

“I usually don’t talk to the media that much,” he said. You see this sort of righteous coyness from college athletes every now and then. They don’t trust the hordes of messenger bag-wielding middle-aged reporters shoving thousands of iPhones and audio recorders under their noses, because why should they? “I just feel like I can get my words twisted sometimes,” Long explained further.

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Northwestern’s recent recruiting surge has been well-documented, and while a number of top recruiting sites have the Wildcats in their top 15 nationally for the class of 2014, there could be more good news coming for NU.

The Wildcats were already in the top five for four-star defensive end/tight end Garrett Dickerson, joining an impressive list that includes Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan and Stanford. NU is also highly regarded by four-star corner Parrker Westphal, who has offers from Florida, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame and others.

Today, the Wildcats joined the top five of four-star wide receiver Derek Kief, along with Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Kentucky. NU was in his original top five, but after he picked up a number of good offers, he decided to reevaluate. Despite the influx of good offers, the Wildcats made the cut once again.

We usually don’t write articles about NU joining a player’s top five — follow us on Twitter if you want to find that stuff out — but Kief’s creativity makes for a fun little post. Kief has an entire website — derekkief.com — dedicated to his recruitment, where you can find highlights, stats, links, quotes, offers, “the legacy,” and basically anything else you could ever want to know. So instead of just tweeting out his top five, he announced it with a photo, declaring that his “speed does kill.”

A high-res image is available here. Recruits have announced their commitments in plenty of creative ways. There have been double hat tricks, bulldog puppies, and more — as an aside, recruits seem to commit to Georgia in the best ways. However, this may be the most creative way a recruit has ever announced a top five. These schools are listed in no particular order, and it will likely be awhile until Kief decides. But if his speed does “kill,” you’ve gotta like Alabama and Kentucky’s chances, right? (Kidding, kidding).