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Update, 7:15 p.m.: We're waiting on this:
#Duke assistant Chris Collins to meet with #Northwestern president Morty Schapiro in Indy or Chicago tonight, Sun-Times has learned.
— Neil Hayes (@bynhayes) March 27, 2013
Everything's still coming along as timelines work, but man, I've been sitting around all day waiting for something to happen. Presumably papers will be signed and I'll be set to publish my longer, well-written post on the topic. Please!
Update, 3 p.m.: So maybe this won't happen today:
.@goodmancbs says on @eyeoncbb podcast deal is being finalized Wednesday night, Doesn't know when announcement will come.#Northwestern
— Inside Northwestern (@insidenu) March 27, 2013
Update, 1:50 p.m.: Still in a holding pattern over here. Andy Katz had written something that seemed to indicate Northwestern wouldn't announce a hire until after Duke's season, but later tweeted that he merely meant Northwestern wouldn't have a press conference until after Duke's and that an announcement could come today.
David Morrison of the News & Record in Greensboro, North Carolina reported that Mike Krzyzewski wouldn't comment, but seemed to indicate if was a "when" rather than an "if", while Miles Plumlee believed Collins had taken the Northwestern job. But we're still waiting on anything official.
Update: From Jeff Goodman at CBS, Chris Collins has verbally agreed to the deal, we're waiting on an announcement:
Nothing's official, so we'll hold off on our big post for later, but it appears, per people who really know their stuff, Chris Collins will be named Northwestern's head basketball coach later today.
I expect Chris Collins to be named tonight at NU. Source: "He is the perfect fit. The meeting in Atlanta sealed what they already knew."
— David Kaplan (@thekapman) March 27, 2013
This follows up on a report Kaplan had filed yesterday, saying Collins and other candidates had met with Northwestern in Atlanta, but that the Duke assistant was the guy and he'd be Northwestern's coach within the next few days.
Update: Now Jeff Goodman of CBS is in:
Chris Collins to Northwestern is a done deal, sources told CBSSports. Announcement expected later today.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanCBS) March 27, 2013
First thoughts on Collins
Our overview of Collins as a candidate from two weeks ago
This all escalated pretty quickly, huh? Just two weeks ago it was Bill Carmody, and now we're almost solid on this. It's anti-climactic, but that's pretty good from Northwestern's standpoint, especially since we were sitting here imagining a coaching search that stretched out weeks and months and ended up with somebody NU didn't want. I think if you'd told me NU would select its top candidate within two weeks, I would have recommended the school get to firing their coach heartily all season long, instead of wavering ambivalently until the end. Collins was, for my money, NU's best candidate, and if it's really true that he's less than 16 or so hours from being NU's coach, more important people than me thought that as well.
Now we sit around and wait. Enjoy these last hours to discuss the merits and demerits of various other coaching candidates - WHY DOESN'T NORTHWESTERN HIRE SHAKA SMART? ANDY ENFIELD WOULD BE A GREAT HIRE HE'S A REAL UP AND COMER HOW COME FLORIDA GULF COAST CAN MAKE THE NCAA TOURNAMENT BUT NOT NORTHWESTERN, IS THE GUY FROM WICHITA STATE INTERESTED?
And most importantly, let's figure out whether we're going to be Duke fans over the next week, because that's a scary, scary prospect.