At every opportunity, Northwestern Vice President for Athletics & Recreation Jim Phillips uses the phrase “Chicago’s Big Ten Team” to describe Northwestern. We constantly see the slogan on signage, in advertising, and on NU swag. However, two men’s basketball players have helped to evangelize the purple in another Midwestern city: Cleveland. Many folks in LeBron’s kingdom have become NU followers due to Dererk Pardon and Gavin Skelly, two kids that developed their game playing high school hoops in Greater Cleveland.
Although both journeyed from the North Coast to the North Shore, they took different paths to wind up on the NU campus.