With 17 wins and eight in conference last season, Northwestern was perhaps two victories from the first NCAA Tournament bid in school history. In his ninth season, Bill Carmody had put together a roster that could compete in the Big Ten, and the best part for Wildcats fans is that Carmody returned eight of his top nine players for this winter. As the Murphy’s Law in basketball form, we should have known the rose would soon lose its bloom.

This wasn’t the first time Northwestern entered an offseason with high hopes for the coming winter. Enter 2005-06, the Cats were coming off a second straight season finishing a game below .500, and in Evanston, that’s reason for excitement. With a core of Vedran Vukusic, Mohamed Hachad and T.J. Parker returning for one more season — and only the utterly replaceable Davor Duvancic leaving — some thought this would be the team to breakthrough.

Instead, Parker — the brother of San Antonio Spur Tony — left school early to play in Europe. The Cats finished a game under .500 for the third straight season and 6-10 in conference for the second season in a row. After that season, Vukusic and Hachad were gone, and Northwestern would win just three total conference games over the next two seasons.

Back to this year. While the expectations for the 2005-06 Wildcats were probably too lofty even if Parker had returned, the idea that Northwestern could make the NCAA Tournament in 2009-10 was realistic. Craig Moore, who as a freshman took many of the minutes Parker left behind, was the only key part gone from last season’s team. Moore knew Carmody’s Princeton offense and 1-3-1 defense well, and he was a great shooter, but he was just one piece.

The key man coming back was Kevin Coble. As a sophomore and junior, Coble did it all for Northwestern, taking a huge percentage of the team’s shots, blocking shots, picking up steals and hitting the defensive glass at All-Big Ten levels. A skinny 6-foot-8, Coble’s game is funky, with stops and starts and awkward fadeaways, scoop shots and deep threes — whatever it takes to get off a shot when the opposition knows that he’s the one who’s going to shoot. This winter was to be the culmination of Coble’s all-time great Northwestern basketball career, one that would end with Coble getting the notoriety he richly deserved by leading the Cats to the NCAA Tournament.

On the eve of this season, though, Coble came down wrong on his foot in practice. X-rays put him out until the end of December, and further consideration put him under the knife and out for the year. Then, senior Jeff Ryan, a bit part for sure but a member of Northwestern’s rotation nonetheless, tore up his left knee in the first half of NU’s first game of the season. In a matter of 48 hours, the focus went from Northwestern making history in March to hoping that the injuries would give younger players experience this season in anticipation of Coble and Ryan coming back for fifth years next winter. Among supporters, the expectations for the 09-10 Cats changed to “let’s not embarrass ourselves.”

Quietly, though, while his team suffered through back-to-back disastrous seasons in 06-07 and 07-08, Carmody had been assembling a deep roster of talent. Led by his former player and now top recruiter Tavaras Hardy, Northwestern had put together a couple of classes that would give the Cats the depth to play good basketball even without Coble.

In previous years, the loss of a player like Coble would relegate the Cats to the bottom of the Big Ten with perhaps one or two conference wins — and that may still happen, I suppose — but the five freshmen and sophomores in Carmody’s top seven have stepped into the voids left by Coble and Ryan, taken on much larger roles in both minutes and possessions than anyone could have expected, and done it in an manner efficient enough to get Northwestern off to a 6-1 start with three wins in five days against major-conference opponents Notre Dame, Iowa State and North Carolina State.

2008-09 season rates

Note: Only players playing at least 10 percent of all team minutes are included.

2009-10 season rates (through seven games)

Difference in roles among returners

These tables inform us in a few ways. The first thing one has to notice is the immense role that John Shurna has been given. The Chicago-area sophomore was very solid as a freshman, showing a willingness to take and make shots both inside and out and to hit the glass even with his waifish frame. Shurna, though, would dip in and out of games mentally, and his defense was often very poor, so Carmody kept him on the bench, especially in the first half of conference season. After scoring in double figures in five of the team’s first 11 games, Shurna didn’t reach that mark again until a win over Chicago State on Feb. 4, and he only scored in double figures in three of the 19 games against Big Ten opponents. The physicality of the game had left him overmatched on many occasions.

With Coble out for the season, though, there was no one besides Shurna who could approach replacing the diversity that the Arizonan brought. As a result, Shurna hardly leaves the floor despite a slow start shooting. After shooting at a 44.6 percent eFG clip in Northwestern’s first three games, Shurna is up to 50.8 over the last four games while attempting nearly 16 shots per game in that stretch. While that efficiency isn’t extraordinary, it is pretty amazing for a player who is playing nearly twice as much this season while taking on a significantly larger load. Shurna did his best Coble impersonation over the weekend, scoring 25 in the 14-point win over Notre Dame and 23 in the two-point win over Iowa State. He made three 3-pointers in each win, didn’t miss a free throw (6-for-6), and had a combined 15 rebounds, eight assists and three blocks to give Northwestern a surprising win at the Chicago Invitational Tournament.

Wildcats fans must pray that Shurna does not go into his post-New Year’s swoon like he did last season. His sporadic play — to add to a difficult schedule — led to Northwestern’s 0-4 start in conference and kept the Cats on the periphery of NCAA Tournament discussion for the rest of the season. Another January fade from Shurna is not an option this year. The “aw shucks”-looking kid has had an offseason to get stronger and play with great competition as part of the USA U19 FIBA World Champions. For Northwestern to compete in a strong Big Ten, Shurna needs to be the star.

Jeremy Nash has also seen his playing time increase dramatically, in fact even more dramatically than Shurna’s. Despite his terrific passing ability and his career-high 20 points in the season-opener against Northern Illinois, Nash remains a replaceable part of the Northwestern offense, but his value in the 1-3-1 zone defense is remarkable. His athleticism and length help Northwestern to create steals — he has 15 this season — and turning over the opposition is really the only way a very average Wildcats defense has consistently stopped opponents in recent seasons.

This season, though, the Cats are doing a terrific job of defending the many 3-pointers they allow. Opponents are making just 27.6 percent of 3-point attempts despite shooting over that zone for 41.5 percent of all field-goal attempts. There is almost certainly a little luck involved in the very poor shooting, so expect a regression, which Northwestern will have to make up for by forcing more turnovers.

The third returner who has notably stepped up his game is Michael Thompson. The junior has gone from playing more than 30 minutes per game to almost never leaving the floor. In fact, he has only sat for seven minutes during the season to date. With Moore’s departure from last year’s team, Thompson was going to have to play more and shoot more, and he’s done both while becoming more efficient thanks entirely to his 2-point shooting. Generally speaking, 5-foot-10 players, which is what Thompson is listed at, do not shoot well inside. There are too many long arms to get in the way of clear looks at the rim. Nonetheless, Juice is hitting 60 percent of his 2-pointers (21-for-35) after making just 45.2 percent last season and 43.4 percent the season before. That 60-percent mark will surely come down, but it’s almost as sure that Thompson has improved a real skill of making shots inside, and that will benefit against opponents who had expected to play him solely for the three.

Increased roles for returners have made up for not quite 60 percent of what was lost with the injuries to Coble and Ryan and the graduations of Moore and little-used Sterling Williams, but that still leaves 40 percent. Two freshmen, Drew Crawford and Alex Marcotullio, have bridged that gap. Crawford was the more highly touted of the two recruits, and he has started right away. While not a focal point of the offense, his ability to make 2-pointers (64.3 percent) and hit the offensive glass (second to Shurna in offensive-rebounding rate) has been essential.

The other freshman is more of a surprise. Marcotullio has played with so much poise and shot the ball so well that Carmody is having trouble keeping him off the court. Marcotullio does everything with aggression. His offense is aggressive, as only Shurna and Thompson shoot as often when on the floor. When he does shoot, it goes in. Marcotullio’s 71.2 eFG reflects his 13-for-26 (50 percent) rate on 3-pointers, which is where nearly all his left-handed shots come from. On defense, Marcotullio is also aggressive, showing an uncanny knack for picking up steals. He’s second on the team with 11 despite averaging less than 16 minutes per game. In the last three wins, though, Marcutullio has played 20, 23 and 26 minutes, grabbing eight steals and knocking down 7-of-15 3-pointers as a huge boost off the bench.

In a lot of ways, Marcotullio and Crawford are in direct competition for the same minutes, since Thompson, Shurna and Nash hardly leave the floor, and Carmody will always have a bigger center — Mirkovic or Rowley typically — as the fourth player on the floor. That is now a competition out of depth rather than necessity.

The question now becomes, can Northwestern keep this up? The Cats already have three wins against major-conference opposition away from home. A matchup at home against Stanford on Dec. 19 should be the only obstacle in the Cats’ six remaining non-conference games. A 12-1 non-conference record would put the NCAA Tournament just eight or nine conference wins away. Northwestern is still terrible on both glasses, and the Cats’ 2-point shooting and 3-point defending rates are probably unsustainable. Moreover, there’s the question of how long Carmody can lean on just a few players so hard before injury or erosion in efficiency interferes.

The efficiency has been the amazing thing. It’s not hard to figure out that some combination of players was going to replace what was lost with Coble and Moore — math ensures it. But for Shurna, Thompson, Nash and the freshmen to be able to play efficient offense while taking on roles that are probably too much for them is remarkable. Common sense tells us this level of play is unlikely to continue, and history tells us Northwestern will end up the snake bit one, but maybe the Purple and White are due some karma after decades of unkind bounces from the basketball gods.