Nicole Auerbach

USA TODAY Sports

Bill Carmody insists that his time at Northwestern was far from his mind as he celebrated with his Holy Cross players Wednesday night.

But it’s hard not to immediately make that connection. After all, after 13 seasons at Northwestern — the lone power conference program to never make the NCAA tournament — Carmody is back in the big dance in his first season with the Crusaders in a most improbable fashion.

Holy Cross finished its regular season 10-19, having lost its final five games heading into the Patriot League championship. The ninth-seeded Crusaders hadn’t won a game away from home during league play before winning four consecutive road games in the tournament to knock out the 8 seed (Loyola-Maryland), the 1 seed (Bucknell), the 4 seed (Army) and finally the 2 seed (Lehigh) in the title game.

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After the final buzzer Wednesday, Carmody's face broke into a giant grin.

“I didn’t even think about (Northwestern) for a second; I didn't put it into any kind of context to tell you the truth — what I've done before, anything like that,” he told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. “I just thought it felt really good in the last 10 days. Our guys stayed together and got it done, didn't quit. I told them on the bus afterward on this trip back, that so many times you work hard … sometimes you do all that and nothing good comes of it, but this time it did. I just felt really good for all our guys.”

Said Holy Cross athletic director Nathan Pine: “The smile on his face last night I think said it all. … The smile on his face really said it all to me that we had come so far in one year since he'd joined us. I'm just excited for where we're headed.”

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Pine hired Carmody last March, a time during which Carmody wasn’t quite sure he’d ever return to coaching. At that point, he’d been away from coaching for two years, having been let go by Northwestern in 2013 after 13 seasons and a 192-220 record. At first, he’d been fine away from the sidelines. But that second year, the itch returned. Carmody found himself visiting practices of former players who were now coaching.

“Then Nate just called me out of the blue,” Carmody said. “I was very surprised, but then I believe the guy, he's a go-getter and I had faith in him.”

Pine was attracted to Carmody because of his background; between head coaching stints at Northwestern and Princeton (where he reached the NCAA tournament in 1997 and 1998), he’d long coached at top-tier academic institutions.

“Him having great experience in success at like academic institutions and being able to recruit those type of student-athletes, kids that are very intent on getting a quality degree and having a big-time basketball experience, that was important to me,” Pine said. “He got us right from the start and understood what he was stepping into. It was the place where he wanted to be. We started talking about what kind of system we had, what kind of kids we had, what kind of talent was on the roster, could this be something that gets going on a rapid incline?”

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There were plenty of bumps in the road during this first season, most notably with the team adapting to Carmody’s system: The Princeton offense.

“It’s having an experienced coach like him, him knowing that if we stick to the process and continue to work on the things that he was asking our players to do that we would ultimately have success,” Pine said. “He exemplified that daily in the way he approached it, and certainly the payoff is pretty grand now as we ran through the Patriot League Tournament. …

“You always hope that you can have immediate success, but it rarely happens that way.”

Sometimes, though, it does. And the man at the helm of the program that could never quite get to the NCAA tournament gets to go dancing.

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