Carla Berube brings March expertise to Northwestern women's basketball. Will the university meet her there?

New Northwestern women's basketball coach Carla Berube is used to winning. And not just the regular season-grind kind of winning, but the kind that keeps teams dancing through March.

At Princeton, where she coached the last six seasons, she led the Tigers to five straight NCAA Tournament appearances, advancing to the second round in 2022 and 2023. Her record in March — spanning conference tournaments and the Big Dance — was a staggering 21-6.

Before that, she helped transform Tufts, a Division III school, into a national powerhouse. In her 17 seasons, Tufts made the Sweet 16 nine times and played in the national championship game twice.

“I love to win,” Berube said at her introductory news conference in Evanston on Tuesday. “I’m lucky enough to be doing that a lot. I think we can do it here.”

Berube’s history gives her natural confidence. But it’s fair to wonder if it will translate at Northwestern.

Since 2000, the Wildcats have made only two NCAA Tournament appearances. They claimed a Big Ten regular-season title in 2020, then dropped to the bottom of the conference standings in the four seasons since.

The decline reflects a sluggishness to adapt to a new, more professionalized college basketball environment. Players can now profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL), luring stars to schools that can offer lucrative deals. They can also transfer without penalty, meaning player movement is more common than ever.

These dynamics will be new to Berube. The Ivy League, where she coached at Princeton, operates differently. There are no athletic scholarships, and incoming transfers to the conference are rare.

The good news is Berube recognizes she’s not in Kansas anymore. She's in the mighty Big Ten, and is already adjusting her game plan.

“We’ll definitely be using the [transfer] portal,” Berube said. “We’ve got to bring in some talented student-athletes from the portal to supplement the great student-athletes that we have here.”

But Berube’s success won't just be about her own adaptability. It depends on whether the university invests behind her. Former coach Joe McKeown, who just retired after 18 seasons, was candid about Northwestern’s hesitancy to participate in the NIL era.

“We really haven’t been that involved in putting money out there for players,” he told the Sun-Times in January 2025. “Other people have.”

He thought this was rooted in institutional pride: wanting players to come to Northwestern for the degree and the experience, not for the money. He also acknowledged they needed to be more active with NIL to survive in the Big Ten.

So, is Northwestern actually ready to pay up?

Publicly, the signals are there. New athletic director Mark Jackson has established positions like a chief revenue officer and a chief communications and branding officer within the athletic department. And Berube insists she wouldn’t have left a winning situation if she didn’t believe that Northwestern was stepping up.

Yet, the skepticism among those already in the building is palpable. Less than a month ago, following a season-ending loss to Purdue, men’s basketball coach Chris Collins called for more investment.

“It’s a big business now,” Collins said. “You’ve got to invest … it’s got to trickle down from the administration to the coaching staff. Everybody’s got to be in alignment in order to win because the programs that are winning, that’s what they’re doing. They’re aligned. There’s a commitment to winning with resources, with investment.”

Those comments suggest that Northwestern has yet to fully put its money where its mouth is.

If the administration follows through, though, Berube has good reason to be hopeful. Especially because there’s a Big Ten turnaround story playing out just 150 miles south in Champaign.

In coach Shauna Green’s first season, Illinois leaped from the conference cellar to a 22-10 record and their first tournament appearance in two decades. Green immediately landed high-impact transfers, then brought in stellar freshmen classes to elevate them further.

Berube is shooting for something similar: an NCAA Tournament appearance in her first season.

“I want to be playing in March,” she said. “And in mid-March.”

Berube has proven she knows the way to the tournament. Now Northwestern has to decide if it's willing to pay for the trip.