As they sit now, they are 4-5 in the Horizon and 9-11 overall.  They have 11 conference games remaining to kind of work back into relevance for March.  

If they do not, and make an early exit from the Horizon tourney, is Coach Darren Horn on borrowed time?  If you are NKU, you want your coach being plucked away every 3 or 4 years.  Doesn't seem like anyone will be beating down Horn's door in the near future.  

They got off to such a fast start in D1, after their initial transition period from DII but they seem to have leveled off into mediocrity.  Is a change needed to get things fired up again?

 

Missing a couple players with great talent, hard to get portal players at NKU, don’t think Horn is the problem, just need a couple studs to complete his roster.

I think it's just getting harder for schools on the direction tier (NKU, WKU, EKU, etc.) to find their place in the new NIL environment.  It's harder to work the portal at these places and it's not like they are going to be able to compete with bigger programs to pay for players.

Has Horn not moved on because no one wants him or he just likes where he's at for the moment?  I don't think him being there long-term is bad for NKU so long as he can keep them competitive.  Of course, Horn was the coach at WKU when I was there and we made the Sweet 16, so I like him a lot.

While I agree that NKU is likely a couple players away from being better, I don’t know if there’s going to be the necessary changes for them to improve in the near future. The portal and NIL is going to make things tougher for many programs like NKU and others similar. Their transition to D1 went well too, which is the crappy part about it. I hope they are better sooner than later, but I think it will be an uphill climb.