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Reports indicate Patrick Baldwin, who played at Northwestern in the early 90's, will be the third and final assistant coach on Northwestern's staff. Scout broke the news:
Multiple sources told Purple Wildcats that former NU player and current Missouri State assistant coach Pat Baldwin is expected to round out the new-look staff at Northwestern.
Note, Scout: it's apparently "Patrick," not Pat, lest you irritate his mother, okay? Teddy Greenstein reported the deal as "not done yet," but neither was the Chris Collins deal for like 32 hours.
I'm not old enough to remember Baldwin, and if you are, raise your damn glasses, because you've sipped enough purple to die four or five times over. Here's his career roundup:
Patrick Baldwin is 19th in NU history in scoring, 2nd in assists, and 1st in steals. He holds single season and game records in steals, too.
— NUHighlights (@NUHighlights) April 18, 2013
His assistant career is the least prominent of any of the guys NU is hiring - after some post-grad business stuff and a brief playing career, we got two years at Wisconsin-Green Bay, seven at Loyola-Chicago, the last two at Missouri State. None of those are particularly great programs, especially not his most recent, where the Bears have kinda floundered.
But there's a lot to like about the hire. For one, Collins is apparently really, really, really adamant about this whole bringing in Northwestern guys. It's nice. They have stock in the program, and it shows that Collins is trying to build something here, at Northwestern, not just a Duke redux. Besides, Collins spent an uber long time at Duke working as an assistnat alongside Steve Wojciechowski and Jeff Capel and other Duke grads, and I guess he knows firsthand alumni do a good job of selling their school.
Secondly: he knows the area. Seven years at Loyola-Chicago. That'll get a guy familiar with the surroundings right quick.
So that would appear to round out the coaching staff, and the most important thing: no Greg Paulus. Ugh, that would've been the worst.