Description Available in: The Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team is an NCAA Division I college basketball team representing Northwestern University in the Big Ten Conference. Men's basketball was introduced at Northwestern in 1901. As of 2020 the team is coached by Chris Collins. The Wildcats received their only invitation to the NCAA Tournament in 2017, after 78 straight years without a bid. The Wildcats have won two Big Ten conference championships (1931 and 1933).
Although Northwestern had great success in the early part of the 20th century, it has spent most of the time since World War II in the bottom half of the Big Ten. The Wildcats were retroactively selected as the 1930–31 national champion by both the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll, and have won only one other conference title, in 1933.