Feb. 6, 2011

NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski offers up a look back at the Northwestern men's basketball team's 71-70 victory over 24th-ranked Illinois at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Saturday.

The 'Cats were up three and just seven seconds remained and now Demetri McCamey, the Illinois guard, was walking to the line for a pair. Behind him, on the 'Cat bench, Bill Carmody yelled for Luka Mirkovic. "Get the rebound. You've got to get it," he said to his center.

"All right," Mirkovic replied.

Moments later he was on the left block and here came McCamey's shot and it bounced off iron and kicked toward Mirkovic. "I first made contact with whoever was behind me, I think it was (Illini center Mike) Tisdale, just got the ball and they fouled me," he would recall.

Now there were 5.5 seconds remaining and it was Mirkovic walking to the line and in front of him were not only two free throws. There also was the chance to ice this game for his team. "Actually, to be honest, nothing was going through my mind," he later said, recounting that walk. "It was just instinct. I was just walking, looking at the ground, I was focused, I didn't hear anybody, I didn't see anything except the basket. My mind was like a clear slate."

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That was Saturday afternoon at Welsh-Ryan Arena, where the 'Cats put on a performance far different from the one they had down in Champaign. Back then, on Jan. 6 in their first meeting with the Illini, they were blitzed out of the gate, they trailed by 23 at halftime, they never mounted a rally and they eventually fell by 25. "Overall, we just didn't come out the right way," the 'Cat swingman Drew Crawford was remembering on Friday. "Especially defensively, they came and I think they were 18 of 22 in the first half. Defensively, we played horribly, especially at the start of the game."

And how was it viewing that movie?

"It's tough to watch. When you play so poorly and get blown out like that, it was embarrassing. It's motivating. I'm glad we get to play them again tomorrow."

Especially since he played just 19 minutes in that first game and ended with a mere two points while going one-of-eight overall and zero-of-six on his threes.

"I came out flat. I came out flat. I didn't come out ready to play and played really poorly. That's something I want to be sure to improve upon. Come out with better energy, us as a team...A key for us is having good starts. We have a couple games like that, bad starts. We've also had good starts. It seems the good starts are games we win and bad starts, we lose the game. It's all about being prepared."

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On Saturday, with just 45 seconds gone, Drew Crawford opened the scoring in this rematch with a three from the left wing. Seventy-two seconds later, with the Illini still scoreless, he banked in a foul line jumper as the shot-clock buzzer sounded, and then here he was hitting another three to put the 'Cats up 18-7 at 12:46. Later, when this game was over, Carmody was asked about Crawford's contention that fast starts are a key for his team. "Definitely," he replied. "And he's usually the guy who gets us going when we have a good start."

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A week earlier, without the injured John Shurna and up against undefeated Ohio State, the 'Cats bled the clock and controlled the pace and missed pulling off the biggest upset of the season by only a basket. "It depends on the team were playing," Michael Thompson, their point guard, would say Friday when asked if they were comfortable playing that style. "We're able to get up and down the court pretty good against certain teams. But a team like Ohio State or Illinois, you've got to slow it down because that's what they thrive on. They're really good transition teams and it seems like we're not comfortable going up and down with them the entire game. So I think we'll definitely try to utilize that more. Definitely. Definitely. That's the plan for tomorrow."

And did the 'Cats get any motivation out of play Ohio State so tough?

"Sure. Sure," Carmody would say on Friday. "I don't have to fool them. They saw they could play with them and that was without John. Some different guys did some different things nicely and, as a team, we did some things. We rebounded, we made some big shots, came through. We didn't win it. But I think they know, 'OK. We can play with just about anybody now.'"

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On Saturday, in their rematch with the Illini, the 'Cats played primarily as they had against the Buckeyes and, just 60 seconds into the second half, led by five. Still, in their lockerroom earlier, Carmody had laid out his displeasure with both Shurna and Mirkovic, who had been bruised, beaten and battered by the Illini in the opening 20 minutes. (Mirkovic had also been hit with an intentional foul.) "I got on (them) to quit feeling sorry for themselves," he would recall. "One thing I suspect of myself is I'm honest. If you're doing something wrong, I'm going to tell you. If you're doing something right, I'm going to tell you. So I said, 'Let's have a good second half.'"

"Coach really expects a lot from Johnny and me and sometimes he's really hard on us," explained Mirkovic. "But he's hard on us because he wants us to succeed and he knows how good we can be. Johnny and I have really set the bar high for ourselves and if we don't play up to that level, Coach is going to be upset. I understand that. So does Johnny. Both Johnny and I are strong mentally and were going to come back and play. It's motivation."

Now, that motivation still fresh in his brainpan, Mirkovic missed a pair of open three-pointers, but then, at 16:25, he delivered a layup off a beauty of a pass from Crawford. Sixty-eight seconds later he was again operating down low against the Illini's Tisdale, who frustrated him this time, yet Mirkovic's missed layup here had delivered a telling point. "We were," Carmody would explain, "throwing the ball down to Luka and Davide (Curletti, the other 'Cat center)...and Luka scored a little bit, got fouled. I think it sort of made Tisdale think of something besides offense. He's very tough from seven feet or so and we just wanted him to think of something more than just coming down and posting up on us. I think Luka established a little bit in there. That was important. He made those guys play defense in there. Tisdale, he had to do something else. We threw the ball down to him and that's really important. Then other stuff can happen."

"That changes things. It gives us momentum," said Thompson. "When Luka's playing with energy, when he's hitting his chest and getting excited with the crowd, that changes things. We have an inside threat. It makes it a lot easier. We have an inside-out presence."

"One of the emphasis," said Mirkovic himself, "was to get the ball down to me just so I can apply pressure to their bigs because they're pretty good, which I think I did pretty well."

He did it well enough to end with nine points and six rebounds, both a tick above his season averages (8.6 ppg, 5.8 rpg). Tisdale, in stark contrast, finished with just four points and three rebounds, which were below his (9.9 ppg, 7 rpg).

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The 'Cat lead would peak at a dozen at 11:06, but here came their drought and the Illini run and, at 6:39, Welsh-Ryan was rocking and this rematch was tied at 53. It was one of those moments on which all games turn and here the 'Cats met it by calling a play named Dribble One out of an offense named Circle. A screen for Michael Thompson, that was its aim, and here he got both from Curletti on the right wing. Calmly, he buried a three.

"I definitely knew the game was getting close and, as the senior leader of the team, I'm just telling the team to keep their composure, stay focused," recalled Thompson, who finished with a game-high 22. "At the time we weren't as aggressive on the offensive end, we weren't making shots. So as a senior, you definitely want to step up and I was able to do that today."

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Now this rematch was a steel cage match, each shot, each possession as valuable as a reputation, and as it roared toward its conclusion there always was the senior leader Thompson, dropping one more three at 3:41, dropping yet another at 2:18 to put the 'Cats up seven. They were up four as the clock dipped under a minute, up six when Thompson sank a pair of foul shots at :49.9, up three when Illini guard McCamey hit a three at :39.3. Now Carmody chose to protect that lead by fouling, by sending the Illini to the line for a pair rather than allowing them to snipe from far outside. "That team shoots 41 percent from three-point range," he would explain. "They have a bunch of guys, (Bill) Cole (40.3 percent on threes), McCamey (48 percent), (D.J.) Richardson (41.2 percent)...(who) could hit it. They're a very good team and they make big plays, so we were going to make them make foul shots."

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Demetri McCamey did not make his last foul shot and Luka Mirkovic corralled the rebound and Illini Brandon Paul fouled him and now, his team up three with five-and-a-half seconds remaining, Mirkovic offered up the first of his two free throws. It hit the front of the rim, bounced, kissed the backboard and dropped. "It felt right. I felt right," he later recalled with a smile. "To be honest, I've worked a lot on my free throws. Early in the Big Ten season I wasn't shooting that well. I think as of late I've been shooting well. Yesterday, I got up about 100 free throws. Hard work paid off."

It paid off with that one, the big one that was the final nail, and now it did not matter that he missed his second or that Paul hit a three at the buzzer. "They put a pretty good beating on us and for us to regroup as a team and come back and win today is huge for us," Michael Thompson was then saying.

"We got knocked down pretty hard down in Champaign earlier," Bill Carmody would finally say. "This wasn't revenge or anything like that. I don't think that way and I don't think our guys do. Still it is real nice because it is Illinois and the way they handled us down there. We lost some tough games...so it's just real nice for us to get a signature victory here. I'm just real happy for the guys."

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