NIU men’s basketball coach Jim Rosborough enters his second year at the helm after compiling a 9-19 record in his rookie season.

Osborough, 42, was hired April 24, 1986, to run the Huskies after being a Tulsa assistant. Before that, he served as a color commentator for Iowa Hawkeye basketball games, an assistant to Iowa Athletic Director Bump Elliot, a Hawkeye assistant coach and head coach at Corkery Grammar School in Chicago.

osborough replaced John McDougal who was fired after 10 years with the NIU Huskies.

The nine-year stint with the Hawkeyes allowed Rosborough to cement his feet in the Chicago area where he recruited people like Ronny Lester, NIU assistant Kenny Arnold and Kevin Boyle. Rosborough said a friend from Chicago helped him in the recruiting effort because the friend offered him a spot in his apartment whenever Rosborough was in the area.

With that offer available, he said he was able “to set up recruiting headquarters” in Chicago and spend the middle days of the week in the city. That work, along with the basketball camps in Iowa City, Iowa, helped rake in a group in the middle ‘70s that began the Hawkeyes’ climb toward the top of the Big Ten.

osborough experienced a near-pinnacle in 1980 when Iowa reached the Final Four. The Hawkeyes lost to Louisville when Lester’s knee gave out. Rosborough called that moment the saddest he has experienced in his years of coaching.

Before going to Iowa, Rosborough taught and coached Corkery to a 127-22 record. But his stint at Iowa came to an end when his application to replace Lute Olson for the head coaching job in 1983 did not pan out. He had risen from part-time assistant to Olson’s top assistant.

At Tulsa, Rosborough was J.D. Barnett’s top assistant. The NIU coach said he learned how to work at a school like NIU while he was at Tulsa.

This year Rosborough will try to reverse the on-court and off-court dilemmas that contributed to last season’s endless problems.