clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Georgetown reportedly hires Northwestern assistant Tavaras Hardy

The first bad news of the Chris Collins era: Northwestern has reportedly lost player-turned-assistant Tavaras Hardy, one of the keys in improved recruiting in recent years, who has apparently taken a job at Georgetown.

By Rodger Sherman
Jonathan Daniel

Some unexpected news from the Northwestern basketball world Wednesday, as CBS' Jeff Goodman reports that Georgetown has hired away Tavaras Hardy to be an assistant basketball coach on John Thompson III's staff:

And although there hasn't been any official word on it yet, this isn't good:

Update: We now have official-ish word:

This is really the first bad news of the Chris Collins era. As new head coach, he had come in, invigorated the program, gotten people excited, gotten bigger recruits to notice Northwestern than Bill Carmody ever had, and yes, retained Hardy, a move we liked very much.

Losing Hardy to another school would be a bad sign and bad for recruiting. It would go against the atmosphere of Northwestern-y Northwestern-ness Collins was trying to build along the lines of Coach K's habit of bringing back former players at Duke, and it would hurt some of the inroads in the Chicago area, where Hardy is a good recruiter.

We figured Hardy would one day get noticed and leave Northwestern if he wasn't going to be head coach here, but we also figured it would be to become a head coach at a smaller school. We'd even discussed Hardy as a potential head coach at NU, although we figured it was unlikely.

Instead, he's leaving to be an assistant at a bigger one. Georgetown does make sense, since it's a Princeton Offense school, the system he played and coached in, but still, weird. Northwestern still hasn't announced the widely reported hiring of Brian James as the team's third assistant, so as of right now, it's just Pat Baldwin.

More From Inside NU