Northwestern will make history when the ball is tipped Friday in New York against Florida Atlantic, the men’s basketball program’s first back-to-back appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
For fifth-year guard Boo Buie, the game means so much more.
In a season in which he already surpassed the school records for points and games played, Buie will look to extend his college career by at least one more game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, about a 3½-hour drive from where he grew up in Albany, N.Y.
“It feels like it’s God rewarding me for being loyal and for staying the course,” Buie said in a news conference Sunday after the selection show. “I’m really excited because I know I’ll have a lot of family there and it’s going to be, potentially, one of the last college games they get to watch in person.”
Coming out of high school at Gould Academy in Maine, Buie had only two Division I scholarship offers: UMass and Northwestern. Since committing to be a Wildcat in September 2018 and enrolling a year later, Buie’s loyalty to the program has been unmatched and has come to define Northwestern basketball.
It has been a season filled with peak moments for Buie, none bigger than when he swished a 3-pointer in a win against Michigan on Feb. 22 at Welsh-Ryan Arena to break John Shurna’s career scoring record.
He scored a season-high 31 points in an overtime upset of then-No. 1 Purdue in early December and put up 29 in another overtime win against then-No. 10 Illinois in late January. In his final game at Welsh-Ryan on Feb. 9, Buie hit a 3-pointer on his last shot to cap a 23-point performance in a 24-point rout of Minnesota.
In a letter to the Northwestern community this week titled, “In Love With the Grind,” Buie described the moments before the game in which he broke the scoring record. He recounted a call he received from Shurna, who said Billy McKinney did the same for him when Shurna broke McKinney’s record.
“It got me thinking about how when the day comes and someone breaks my scoring record, I know I’m going to make the same phone call,” Buie wrote in the letter. “That’s how much this place means to me.”
The unanimous first-team All-Big Ten selection is averaging 19.2 points and 5.1 assists this season. He averaged 20 and 4.5 in two NCAA Tournament games a year ago as the Wildcats beat Boise State before falling to UCLA.
Seeded ninth this year in the East Region, the Wildcats (21-11) open against a tournament-toughened team in No. 8 seed FAU (25-8), which reached the Final Four in 2023. The game tips at 11:15 a.m. on CBS-2.
“We got what we deserved,” NU coach Chris Collins said after the selection. “We are an NCAA Tournament team and we’re excited about the opportunity to go to Brooklyn.”
Northwestern tied for third in the Big Ten at 12-8 and has nine Quad 1 and 2 wins. The Wildcats are third in the country in 3-point percentage at 39.4%.
Not a deep team to begin with, though, Northwestern enters the tournament without two starters in guard Ty Berry (season-ending knee surgery) and center Matt Nicholson (foot), while guard Ryan Langborg missed two games late in the regular season with an ankle injury.
“There are plenty of basketball programs that wouldn’t have been able to weather that storm,” Buie wrote in his letter. “But this is a special group, and we were ready. I came back to Northwestern for moments like that and to be the guy who helps my teammates push through that adversity.”
With Nicholson out, the Wildcats will need productive minutes from big men Luke Hunger and Blake Preston. They’ll have a difficult matchup in 7-foot-1 Vladislav Goldin, a second-chance opportunity machine who averages 15.6 points and 6.8 rebounds.
The Owls continue to benefit from the momentum of their Cinderella run last year, finishing second in the American Athletic Conference before suffering a grueling one-point loss to Temple in the AAC Tournament semifinals. Guard Johnell Davis of Gary, the conference’s co-Player of the Year, figures to be a headache for the Wildcats defense.
If the Wildcats can get back in transition and limit an FAU team that is talented from deep, they could scrape by to the second round and a likely meeting Sunday with defending national champion and overall No. 1 seed UConn. No. 9 seeds entered this year’s tournament with a 78-74 all-time edge against No. 8 seeds.
“We’re writing our own story,” Collins said. “I’m so happy for these players. All they’ve done all year is just show up every day and work their butts off and accept coaching, good and bad.”
Ethan Ferguson is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
