Thanks to Chris Lowery — a former Sweet 16 head coach — Northwestern’s ‘D’ never rests

It was as hard-fought a game as there was in the 2007 NCAA Tournament. Every shot, every pass, every movement hotly contested. Every momentum swing quickly snuffed out.

Blue-blood Kansas had a No. 1 seed and one of the most potent offenses in college basketball, but this Sweet 16 game was played — from start to finish — at the pace of the mid-major admiringly referred to as “Floorburn U.”

The Jayhawks held on, outlasting Southern Illinois 61-58 to advance to the Elite Eight.

But Salukis coach Chris Lowery, then just 34, walked off the floor as one of the hottest up-and-comers in the country.

Afterward, Kansas coach Bill Self looked like he’d been in a steel-cage match.

“Whoever plays Southern isn’t going to look good offensively,” he said. “It just isn’t going to happen.”

It was Lowery’s third straight team to make it to the Big Dance. He was linked to, among other schools, mighty Michigan, along with West Virginia’s John Beilein — who would get that coveted job — and Xavier’s Sean Miller. It was some serious company.

Instead, Lowery signed a seven-year extension to stay at his alma mater, where he’d starred at point guard — playing in two NCAA Tournaments — and served as an assistant to Bruce Weber. He was where he wanted to be. He’d already gone home to SIU, leaving Weber and Illinois, after Matt Painter left for Purdue. Why mess with such a good thing?

But the winning dried up, and SIU fired Lowery in 2012. So he went back to work for Weber at Kansas State and remained there for a decade.

That’s life in the coaching business.

But maybe, just maybe, Lowery — in his first season on Chris Collins’ staff at Northwestern, and the architect of the hellacious defense that has propelled the Wildcats to their second NCAA trip — has earned another shot.

“Any time you’re doing something you love and have been a head coach at a young age, you want to do it again,” said Lowery, now 50. “Everybody talks about ‘love of the game,’ but you really want to coach your own team. That never wavers when you become an assistant.”

Lowery won the first-ever Big Ten Howard Moore Assistant Coach of the Year Award last week. The award, named for the late UIC coach and Wisconsin assistant, is given to the conference’s top assistant.

Sixteen years ago, the Salukis rose to No. 14 in the Top 25 and thoroughly outclassed Holy Cross and Virginia Tech in March despite not having any players who’d get drafted by an NBA team or play in the league. The starters included Chicago-area products Tony Young and Bryan Mullins, who is SIU’s current coach.

“But that group of guys felt they were a Final Four team,” Lowery said. “We felt invincible.”

Along with the defensive X’s-and-O’s, it’s that strong-willed spirit Lowery has brought to the Wildcats. He felt a surge of it inside when Collins said during their initial meeting, “We don’t have a lot of history, but we can make some.”

From day one, Lowery poured that sentiment into players, emphasizing how powerful they could be at the defensive end when all working together. Self once marveled at Lowery’s defense as “all five guys moving in unison, every bounce, every pass.” It’s an apt description of the Wildcats, too.

“If you’re in the right spot,” Lowery tells them all the time, “the other team throws you the ball.”

A case in point is the ascent of senior guard Chase Audige, who led all Big Ten players in steals and is a finalist for Naismith Defensive Player of the year along with UCLA’s Jaylen Clark, Rutgers’ Caleb McConnell and Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner.

But the strength is in the unit. To watch the Wildcats is to appreciate how hard they play while also wondering how a collection of modestly athletic players is winning so often. Seven-footer Matthew Nicholson, for example, barely saw the floor last season on a losing team. Lowery reached in and found something.

“There was so much potential in him he didn’t know he had yet,” Lowery said. “It meant a lot to him to see he has value in his game and a future in his game.”

Lowery has been good, too, for Collins, who needed a winning season to get off the hot seat.

“He has brought an aggressiveness and a grit and a toughness to our defense,” Collins said. “I did a deep dive at the end of last year about what [were] some things we needed to do to get better. We needed to guard better and we needed to be physical. Those are things he really brings to the table.”

Lowery didn’t go to Evanston to lose.

“That’s just the history we had to fight,” he said.

In 2007, the Salukis’ season ended in San Jose, California. In 2023, Wildcats madness begins Thursday in nearby Sacramento.

They didn’t go there to lose.

“I think people watching us didn’t know if [winning] was sustainable or not,” Lowery said. “At every step, ‘Nah, they’re the same old Northwestern.’ Well, with each win, each week, we kind of shed that.”

That’s not the architect of the “D” being defensive. He’s just telling it like it is.