Fred Hill, Ivan Vujic won't be Chris Collins' assistant coaches

Nothing surprising here, but Chris Collins has decided not to retain two of Bill Carmody's assistant coaches in Fred Hill and Ivan Vujic, per Nick Medline of Scout.

This would appear to be good news for those who had hoped Northwestern would keep Tavaras Hardy, the former NU player with strong recruiting acumen around Illinois - Medline reports Collins is trying to keep Hardy around.

The only one of these dudes who really had a shot is Fred Hill. For starters, he and Collins worked together in the late 90's at Seton Hall under Tommy Amaker. Damn, Chris, you guys go back a long way and now you're icing Fred? But there's also the Jaren Sina thing: Hill was the primary recruiter on the New Jersey point guard who is supposedly one of the better prospects NU has been able to earn a commitment from in recent memory, and the recruit's family was into Hill. There was talk of retaining Hill to help NU's chances with Sina.

I'm not surprised Collins wouldn't keep an assistant coach on staff just to raise his chances with one recruit. If you heard him speak passionately Tuesday about how important it is to have a staff that gets along well and works well together, it was sort of clear he'd opt for fit over circumstance, and that he thinks the benefit of having a good staff outweighs any one recruit he could land. Besides, he seems to think he can sell people on Northwestern. Well, he just got rid of one of the things Sina likes most about Northwestern, so he'll have a chance to sell one kid in particular on Northwestern right off the bat.

Hill was only on Northwestern's staff for two years. The former Rutgers coach - who was fired after a dispute with an umpire at a Rutgers baseball game where his dad is the coach, not, you know, after verbally/physically abusing his players, so nice move there, Scarlet Knights - was brought in to give a boost on East Coast recruiting, and he did pretty quickly by landing Sina. But, well, alas.

Vujic was the assistant coach you heard the least about. The Croatian native was supposedly on staff for two things: helping with big men, although Hardy was also there for that, and aiding with the recruitment and adjustment process of international players, something NU has had quite a lot of. However, Vujic himself didn't bring in a whole ton of international guys - in the five years he's been on staff, it's been Alex Olah and transfer Nikola Cerina, while Mislav Brzoja and Milos Kostic were committed, but didn't get in due to academics and decommitted, respectively.

I wouldn't be surprised if recruiting internationally isn't a huge emphasis for Collins at Northwestern. Although he made a brief joke about the international makeup of the roster in his press conference, pointing out how he won't only recruit in Chicago, there's no evidence from his past work at Duke that he'll try to sustain it. The only foreign players at Duke in recent memory - not counting Luol Deng and Australian-born Kyrie Irving, I guess - are Martynas Pocius and Olek Czyz, who transferred after two years where he barely played. In that same span, Northwestern has had, like, 12. The international pipeline has its bonuses and its flaws, and it hasn't reeled in any superstars for Northwestern