In what is usually a time for tranquility throughout the world of college sports, the summer of ‘03 marked a hectic time with some good, some bad and some we’d all like to forget.

Here’s a taste of what you missed if you haven’t been keeping pace with the Huskies over the past couple months.

O lineman dies in collapse

Front page news throughout the the nation was the Chicago Porch Collapse, which killed 13 people. What you may or may not have known was that one of those victims was a student at NIU.

Shea Fitzgerald, a redshirt sophomore football player, was apparently sandwiched between the fallen porch floors that caved in to the basement at his brother’s apartment on Chicago’s North Side.

A 6-foot-8, 283-pound projected starter on the offensive line, Fitzgerald was there with two teammates, Pat Raleigh and Brad Cieslak.

"I didn’t see it happen," said Cieslak. "Me and Pat had just walked inside [from the porch], and we took about 10 steps inside and it sounded like a 300-foot tree had fallen. We saw the floor was collapsed down to the basement - it was gone in almost the blink of an eye."

NIU preseason No. 1

With 24 first-place votes, the Huskie football team topped the MAC News Media Associations list ahead of even the East’s Marshall and Miami-Ohio.

With 13 starters coming back from an 8-4 season and share of the MAC West crown, high hopes await this year’s squad.

Huskies to pro ranks

NIU football’s Tim Vincent was signed by the Chicago Bears and baseball’s Joe Mazzuca was picked up by the Florida Marlins.

On May 7, Vincent, a life-long Bears fan, signed a standard free-agent contract. The 6-foot-6, 290-pound offensive tackle is still listed on the Bears roster as cuts are being made every week.

A shortstop, Mazzuca was selected with the 353rd pick on the June 3 Major League Baseball Draft.

Mazzuca took his signing bonus into Jamestown, N.Y., where he’s with the single A Jamestown Jammers until Sept. 3.

Hammock to Wisconsin

Former NIU All-MAC running back Thomas Hammock will stay with football despite his playing career cut short because of a heart condition.

Hammock, a two-time 1,000 yard rusher, will be a graduate assistant for head coach Barry Alvarez and the University of Wisconsin this season.

Hammock was after his third consecutive year of being both an Academic All-American and All-MAC before feeling chest pains after NIU’s first game against Wake Forest in 2002. Hammock rushed for 176 yards in that one game.

Mr. Basketball to NIU

South Dakota’s top player, Paige Paulsen, signed with the NIU basketball team.

The 6-foot-7 power forward originally signed with Lamar. Then head coach Mike Dean left and Paulsen asked to be let out of his binding letter of intent.

That is where coach Rob Judson and the Huskies stepped in and offered a scholarship to Paulsen, who averaged 25.5 points, 11 rebounds and five assists his senior year, to which he was awarded with the Mr. Basketball award for South Dakota. As a junior, Paulsen led his team to a state title.

Tennis coach to Marquette

After coaching the NIU men’s tennis team for the past four years, Steven Rodecap took an offer to coach at Marquette.

A graduate of the MAC’s Ball State in 1996, Rodecap helped the Huskies to a 16-10 record and a runner-up finish at the MAC Tournament last year.

A replacement has not yet been named.

Bates hopes for CBA career

The NIU basketball team’s point guard from last year, Jay Bates, worked out for the Rockford Lightning CBA team over the summer.

Bates, who has used up all of his NCAA eligibility, is still a student at NIU working on his degree.

He has yet to hear from the Lightning, who will play four home games at NIU ‘s Convocation Center this year, about his prospects of making the team.

Baseball and softball end

NIU baseball coach Ed Mathey led the Huskies to a school-record 34 wins (34-24) in his first year with the team. The Huskies qualified for the MAC Tournament for the first time since 2000, where they upset top-seeded Kent State in the first round.

The NIU softball team finished with a 23-20-1 record. The Huskies lost to a lower seeded Bowling Green team in the opening round of the MAC Tournament, then fell again to Miami-Ohio.

As MAC men's basketball teams slowly receive bad news, NIU has been graced with the opposite.

Three underclassmen players from MAC teams have been declared for the NBA Draft.

Central Michigan's 7-foot center Chris Kaman, Ball State's 6-foot-8 power forward Theron Smith and Marshall's 6-foot-4 shooting guard Ronald Blackshear all have entered their names in the draft. Two of the three are from NIU's West division.

All three have one year of eligibility remaining and have until a week before the June 25 draft to remove their name and return back to school. However, word is that both Smith and Blackshear have not continued with their classes and the coaches are looking for recruits to replace them already.

While quality-wise this will hurt the MAC's overall competitive level, it does open a path for the Huskies to the MAC title.

NIU graduates only two players in point guard Jay Bates and center Mike Morrison, but returns four of its top five players: power forward Marcus Smallwood, shooting guard Perry Smith and small forwards Todd Peterson and Jamel Staten.

Will soon-to-be sophomore Anthony Maestranzi be able to handle the pressure as the main point guard? How quickly will the incoming freshmen be able to produce at the point guard spot? Is it true that Todd Peterson is still growing - a la Mike Dunleavy Jr. at Duke - and could be a blooming star in the MAC?

Soon-to-be sophomore, 6-foot-10 Bryson McKenzie, has looked great in team workouts and is twice as good as Mike Morrison ever was athletically. A physical guy, McKenzie should be able to beat any big man in the MAC down the floor and has no problem finishing around the hoop. But, the fact remains that he just recently has gotten serious about basketball and is very raw fundamentally.

While Western Michigan has to cope with a coaching change, NIU's coach Rob Judson is staying put after not getting the University of Illinois job. Former WMU head man Robert McCullum, who was an assistant with Judson with the Illini in the late '90s, took off for South Florida.

Judson and McCullum had their share of battles both being in the MAC West together the past two years (McCullum was at WMU three years total), but they aren't expected to end. South Florida has been on NIU's schedule the past two years.

Regardless if NIU plays USF again, the MAC schedule should hold enough surprises, battles and potentially a season at the top for the Huskies.

Basketball is starting to turn things around.

Football has turned it around.

Wrestling has really turned it around.

Not to take anything away from Rob Judson or Joe Novak, both have done wonders for their programs, but Dave Grant has turned a team that was on the verge of extinction into an NCAA powerhouse.

It is understood that Judson took over a 5-23 team his first year and transformed it into a 12-16 team. Good for him.

The basketball team currently is tied for second in the MAC this season, but it was unable to get out of the first round in the MAC Tourney as it lost 97-93 to Marshall last season.

Novak had an extremely rough start for the Huskies as he had a 3-30 record in his first three seasons, including the infamous 23-game losing streak.

In the past three seasons, this year’s MAC Coach of the Year led his team to back-to-back 6-5 campaigns before last year’s 8-4 season. The Huskies also repeated as the MAC West Division co-champion.

People think that NIU was snubbed out of a Bowl game this past season, but still, the highest that it was ranked was 35th in the country.

That is where Grant comes into effect.

Grant has something in common with Novak; he also won a MAC Coach of the Year award last year.

Last season, the wrestling team had the second-best record in school history with a 14-4 record under Grant. The year before, NIU had a 9-8-2 mark, good for its first winning season since the 1988-’89 season.

After having his team place second in the MAC behind Central Michigan (who NIU just handed its first conference loss since the 1997-’98 season), it finds itself with a 10-6 record and a 2-1 record in the conference.

Grant and the Huskies have taken down two Top 15 teams this season, one over the third-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes and the other against the 14th-ranked Chippewas.

The closest that an NIU squad has come to taking down an opponent of that magnitude was when the women’s basketball team came up short against fourth-ranked Kansas State earlier this season, 63-58.

NIU now owns a spot nationally in the Top 25, and will surely move up after last Friday’s victory over CMU.

The highest it has been ranked this season was No. 21.

When was the last time football or basketball was ranked that high?

Actually, when was the last time that either of those teams were ranked at all?

Even though Judson and Novak receive more attention in the public eye, Grant keeps winning.

How many people could even name the head coach of the wrestling program before this article? Five dollars (and a penny, Mark Pickrel) to anyone who could prove this.

The fact of the matter is, we have a team that has basically been ranked the whole season and not a lot of people know about it.

The football team manhandled an overrated Bowling Green team that was ranked 16th, but even the crowd was chanting "overrated," so you know what was going on.

Point being, Grant and his men have gone to battle against six Top 20 teams, and have held their own against the nation’s elite. Hence, NIU now is being recognized as one of the nation’s elite itself.

Grant has something in common with the other coaches.

They all inherited a team that was at or near the bottom, the difference is Grant is seeing the results much faster.

Judson and Novak are getting all the credit for turning their programs around by both the community and the student body, Grant really hasn’t received any credit locally, but he has where it counts.

On the national level.