The Northwestern men's basketball team almost produced the upset of the season against second-ranked Purdue on Wednesday night. While the Wildcats ultimately came up short, at least we got to witness an emotional rollercoaster ejection from Northwestern's coach as a result.
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In the final seconds of Northwestern's 105-96 overtime loss, coach Chris Collins was ejected in dramatic (and hilarious) fashion.
At the buzzer Chris Collins is T'd up and ejected from the game and there is time back on the clock pic.twitter.com/eGqWsdAa8n
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) February 1, 2024
The strange sequence started when Collins was given a technical foul and ensuing ejection for screaming at a referee during the game's final possession. From there, Collins — still livid — had to be held back by one of his players, to keep him from going at the referee.
After asserting to the player, "I'm good!" multiple times, the player let him go — prompting Collins to storm past the referees and utter some more choice words, before calming down enough to shake the hand of Purdue head coach, Matt Painter.
Collins wasn't done there. Still visibly fired up as he exited the court, Collins gave the thumbs up to Purdue's bench, gave a hug to Purdue's star player Zach Edey — who scored 30 points and grabbed 15 rebounds in the nail-biting win — then egged the Purdue crowd on before disappearing out of sight.
It was a whirlwind 45 seconds for Collins, who was likely upset because Purdue attempted a whopping 46 free throws during the contest, compared to Northwestern's eight.
While Collins claimed that the game had great officiating during his postgame press conference, he also noted, "I just don't know if I've ever seen a box score like that, honestly. I don't know if I've ever seen a disparity like that... But, thats how the game's called. You got to live with it."
Collins managed to calm down by the time he conducted the press conference — but there was also some lingering frustration, regarding the absurd discrepancy in free throw attempts between the two teams.
It's worth noting that the referee who was subject to Collins' tirade was Courtney Green — who, according to many X users, is notorious for his poor officiating of Big Ten games.
Although Northwestern fell short of producing a historic upset on Wednesday, them taking one of the country's top teams to their limit was still admirable.
Clearly they've inherited their head coach's emotion and enthusiasm — for better or for worse.
