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Naperville Central senior Drew Crawford signed a National Letter of Intent to play basketball at Northwestern Wednesday. Crawford earned co-DuPage Valley Conference Player of the Year honors in 2007-08 after averaging 18 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, and leading the Redhawks in assists and blocks.
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If Tavaras Hardy still worked for J.P. Morgan, he would no doubt be trading on his basketball connections.

The three-time Northwestern captain played professionally for a season in Finland before entering Chicago's financial services industry in June 2003. Several months later, he began coaching with the Illinois Defenders AAU program. On the long van rides to tournaments or the overnight hotel trips, the young kids would inevitably ask Hardy about his playing experience.

Hardy might not have known it at the time, but he was analyzing a futures market. The 28-year-old Northwestern assistant had to laugh over the phone Wednesday afternoon: "It just so happened that he got to be pretty good and my life took me this way."

Hours earlier, Naperville Central senior Drew Crawford had signed his letter of intent to play for the Wildcats. A former member of the 15-and-under Defenders team will be joining him in Evanston.

"That started off - I was doing it just for fun but then got pretty intense with it, where I was coaching two teams at the same time," Hardy said. "I had no intentions of parlaying those AAU teams into (any) high school or college coaching jobs. I was doing it just to give back. I love the game of basketball."

When Hardy was weighing the decision to transition into coaching full-time, he consulted with Crawford's father Danny, the veteran NBA referee. But landing the 6-foot-5-inch guard wasn't exactly an insider deal.

As a junior, Crawford felt somewhat slighted and underexposed. The DuPage Valley Conference co-Player of the Year averaged 18 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, and led his team in assists and blocked shots, but didn't receive a single scholarship offer.

Crawford projected as more of an Ivy League or Mid-American Conference player until he raised his profile with the Illinois Warriors AAU team.

"I really got on the national AAU circuit. I saw (all) the other great players that were in this country," Crawford said Wednesday. "Just playing against them, I really was able to elevate my play and kind of get to the next level.

"I kind of showed them that I could play in college in the Big Ten."

Crawford represents Central's first Big Ten men's basketball player in a generation. Central assistant Bob Sterr - the program's head coach for 22 seasons - could recall only two previous examples. Danny Klier, a 1979 graduate, eventually went on to play at Illinois. John Clawson, class of 1962, ran with Cazzie Russell at Michigan and later won a gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

Crawford, who carries a 4.2 grade-point average and scored a 31 on the ACT, could handle the academics. It was a matter of convincing a coaching staff that has recruited eight Illinois natives, as well as international players from Croatia, Serbia, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.

"It was one of those things (where) I knew (Crawford) had talent and potential but I was always up-front and honest with him," Hardy said. "We would keep an eye on him and we'd watch his development. He had a pretty good year last year but I wouldn't say we were thinking that this is a kid that could come in and start for us.

"When we recruit kids, we want to recruit kids that have a chance to make an immediate impact. This summer, playing with his AAU team, we really saw Drew grow and mature to that type of player."

With the breakthrough summer came offers from more than a dozen schools, including Wake Forest and Oklahoma State. But Crawford couldn't pass up the chance to study business close to home at a world-class university. Crawford made a verbal commitment to Northwestern in September.

Last month Northwestern junior forward Kevin Coble sat at a table in an O'Hare Marriott ballroom during the conference's media day. The 6-8 political science major was asked what he wants to do with his degree. Coble obviously said playing in the NBA but then mentioned - with a straight face - owning a professional basketball team. That seemed reasonable. After all former Wildcat Rick Sund - an Elgin native - has worked in NBA front offices for more than three decades and is now the Atlanta Hawks executive vice president and general manager. And Jim Stack, a 1983 Northwestern graduate, is the general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

"It's tough to find a school that has the (academic) balance," Coble said. "Combine that with basketball, the Big Ten, it's hard to find. You usually get one or the other. There's usually not a middle ground on that - one extreme."

Northwestern has swung to another extreme on the court. The Wildcats have never made the NCAA tournament and last finished with a winning record in 2001-02. Last week they lost an exhibition to Robert Morris, an NAIA school.

But Northwestern's well-received 2008 recruiting class includes 7-foot center Kyle Rowley and 6-11 Luka Mirkovic - two interior players who passed on Big East schools. Plus the Wildcats will soon lose seniors Craig Moore and Sterling Williams from the perimeter. As Northwestern coach Bill Carmody said: "It's a nice place for a guard to be (in) the next few years."

You don't need to be an investment banker to see opportunity in an undervalued program.