The NIU basketball teams’ seasons are winding down, the MAC tournaments are around the corner and — at least for other schools — March Madness is on the horizon.

What better time for a state of the basketball address? Well, maybe two weeks ago, but who’s counting.

On the surface, all seems well on the hardwood for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams, but there is more to the story.

We’ll start with the good. Both teams sport records that are marked improvements over last season.

The men stand at 13-9 and have been among the top of the MAC West all season. Last season, the Huskies stumbled to an 11-17 record and were an equally poor 7-11 in conference.

The women don’t have the solid record of the men, but that’s not the point.

In her first season, coach Carol Owens has NIU at 9-14. That’s a two-win improvement over last season already. But in both teams’ cases, records can be deceiving.

Both teams have a shot to make a run in their respective conference tournaments, but I wouldn’t expect a conference championship from either.

Now, if you’re a chemistry major, you can really appreciate watching these two teams play, but chemistry can only take a team so far.

Which leads to some of the problems the teams face.

The whole balanced team thing worked for a while for Rob Judson’s Huskies, but dents in the armor have become apparent as of late.

After a four-game winning streak seemed to have the men on the fast track to a MAC West title, the Huskies inexplicably dropped two games in a row. The Huskies couldn’t manage a single lead in either game. I guess a 2-0 lead is too much to ask for these days.

Judson always seems to notice who is hot and yanks them before they can reach ‘take over the game’ status. It’s supposed to be for the sake of team play and, here’s that word again, chemistry.

These are some of the many things that have led to the unveiling of firerobjudson.com. Not original by any stretch, but it’s there, even if it looks like it was made in about 42 seconds.

At least they waited a few years, unlike the guys at Florida who gave football coach Ron Zook exactly two days on the job before their site hit the Web.

As bad as the recent losses and questionable coaching tactics have made the men look, the women have their own problems.

The women seemed to have great chemistry as well, but that was until their star player Stephanie Raymond went down. That was supposed to be the collapse of the team, but it was the opposite.

The Huskies won their two games without Raymond: a triple overtime thriller and a last-second victory over Miami.

Now that Raymond is back the team seems to be in disarray.

In the Huskies’ last seven games with Raymond, they are 1-6. Who knows what that means. Could they be better without their best player?

And I won’t even get into yesterday’s Eastern Michigan debacle that featured an Eagles’ 20-0 run to start the game.

So this concludes the state of the basketball address and if you made it this far, you can see it’s not the best of times for NIU basketball. But if a certain Web site gets its wish, next season might be different.