There is a fresh, new beginning at Northern Illinois.
The clean slate a brand new coaching staff offers can overshadow what NIU basketball has proven over the past several decades: It’s a very difficult basketball coaching job.
The difficulty, however, is likely why first-year coach Matt Majkrzak was hired last March –– at least he thinks so.
“It’s probably why I got the job, because they wanted to know what needed to be different,” Majkrzak said.
And Majkrzak believes that finding success at a place that hasn’t had it in quite some fits him perfectly.
“You almost need someone who is used to being at a hard job,” said Majkrzak, who spent the previous seven years as the head coach at Division II Northern Michigan. “Northern Michigan was bad, so it’s not like a new thing in trying to turn around something.”
Majkrzak went 136-73 at Northern Michigan. He guided the Wildcats to the last four Division II NCAA Tournaments while averaging 24 wins a year. Prior to Majkrzak, NMU went two decades without a 20-win season and posted single-digit win totals in eight of the previous 12 seasons.
Majkrzak believes when you have a coach coming from a higher level — the previous six NIU coaching hires came from the high-major ranks of college basketball — it’s easier to get caught up in all the things you don’t have or are limited by.
“I think that is definitely a different approach from our end, because we look at things and can’t believe all the things we do have in comparison to Division II,” Majkrzak points out.”
But Northern Illinois basketball has been another degree of difficulty.
History, particularly recent history, is proof of the assessment of how difficult a job it is in DeKalb.
Since NIU joined the Mid-American Conference in 1997, the basketball program has won 20 or more games one single time. That was a 21-13 season in 2015-16. And in those 29 years in the MAC, the Huskies put together a winning conference record only three times.
That three-decade track record covers — or has taken down — five different head coaches. The last coach to leave Northern Illinois still standing was Jim Molinari way back in 1991. He guided the Huskies to a 25-win season and NCAA Tournament before departing for Bradley.
For an abundance of reasons not meant for this story, the program has faced several issues in getting it turned around.
But a fresh start with a coaching change will always provide hope. And that’s where Director of Athletics Sean Frazier is at after an out-of-the-box hire in Majkrzak.
But coaching is coaching and winning is winning no matter the level. And while every first-year coach believes they will win when taking over a new program, Majkrzak has experienced and tasted it.
NIU basketball also makes the move next year to the Horizon League. That’s a plus in that the league is a step down from banging heads with the likes of Akron, Toledo, Kent State and Miami-Ohio in the MAC, basketball programs with far greater resources for basketball than NIU.
“I really like the idea of places and jobs in basketball where you can be really successful but haven’t been,” Majkrzak said. “There isn’t as much pressure to do it a certain way. You have the freedom to build the program exactly how you want. You aren’t trying to replicate what someone did two years ago or five years ago. I thought specifically at NIU you have a chance to do that.”