By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska. "To me it was a slugfest, grinder game," Chris Collins would later say.
"Defensively, I thought Northwestern was excellent. There were no good looks for either team early," echoed the Husker coach Tim Miles.
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska even without their injured point Bryant McIntosh, who sat out after getting his left knee buckled four days earlier against Brown. "We understand how much Bryant McIntosh means to Northwestern," Miles would say about that. "He's such an all-around player, floor general. They miss him dearly, no doubt."
That is why, said Collins, "We knew we were going to have to play a (grinder) game like that. We were going to have to defend our tails off. We were going to have to be smart offensively and play through our main guys and get them the looks. For the most part we did that. It was just one of those nights when we didn't shoot the ball very well."
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska even while shooting poorly without their injured point Bryant McIntosh, and with eight minutes remaining they were down just a point.
••••••••••
Bryant McIntosh, of course, is the 'Cat choreographer, the virtuoso who directs their offense, and without him they were like a symphony orchestra stripped of its conductor. "When you take our main creator out," explained Collins, "we become a team that has to score off our offense. That (creating) is not a strength of what a lot of our guys do. They're good players. But when you have a guy like Bryant, he can break you down, he can play pick-and-roll, and obviously that's a big element of what we do. But you have to play with what you have. I'm not making excuses. It's part of the game. Everybody has injuries."
Could he quantify how much easier it was to play Northwestern when it didn't have McIntosh, Miles would be asked.
"I'm not going to say it's ever easy playing Vic Law, Scottie Lindsey, Derek Pardon, with (assistant) Brian James and Chris Collins over there carving you up," he said. "But you just know that you can take some chances that you wouldn't ordinarily take defensively with him (playing). He makes plays and he gets them organized. We thought maybe we could disrupt them a little bit. I don't know if we did."
"I thought they were playing their normal game," Collins would say when asked if the Huskers did anything different in an attempt to disrupt them.
But his 'Cats, of course, could not play their normal game and run their offense through their point, and so here they turned their focus to the wings Law and Lindsey and especially to the center Pardon. "Our main emphasis was get the ball inside. We felt we had a matchup there," Collins later explained. "We wanted to see if they were going to double us or play us straight up in there. For most of the game, they played him straight up and Dererk got the touches, got 18 shots. If you look at our shot distribution, the right guys had the ball."
The right guys, in fact, took 43 of the 'Cats 65 shots, which was the plan. But Pardon dropped just six of his 18 (33.3 percent) on his way to a team-high 17. And Lindsey dropped just four of his 14 (28.6 percent) on his way to a dozen. And Law dropped just two of his 11 (18.2) on his way to eight. "It was just one of those nights when we didn't shoot the ball very well," Collins said, giving voice to the stats, and that was not all. The Huskers, on their part, also blocked 14 'Cat shots while holding them to just 29.2 percent shooting overall, to just 28.6 percent shooting on their threes.
Still. Still. Still. The six-foot-seven Law did an admirable job controlling the six-foot Husker star point Glynn Watson, and the 'Cats defended ardently enough to limit them to 28.6 shooting in the first half (eight-of-28). In these 20 minutes too they bounced back from five down at 13:39 to up six at 9:33, from down three at 3:54 to up five at halftime, and as the second half unfolded they again refused to blink in (to quote Collins) this slugfest, this grinder game of stare down.
They refused to blink and, following a baby jumper by Pardon, they were down just a point as the clock ticked under eight.
••••••••••
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska, but now, just 16 seconds after Dererk Pardon has pulled them to within one, Husker guard Anton Gill goes up for a three from the right side of the arc. Scottie Lindsey, in pursuit, flies at him, but Gill drops his shot even while getting fouled and then hits his free throw to finish off a four-point play.
"I thought they got a lot of energy from that," Collins will say, and now this game turns irrevocably in the Huskers' favor. After Lindsey answers with a jumper in the lane, they get one of their own from their forward Isaac Copeland, and now comes this. A missed three by Law and a pair of free throws by Husker point Watson. One-of-two from the line by Pardon and a conventional three-point play by Copeland. Another one-of-two from the line by Pardon and a Copeland dunk at 5:41 that puts the Huskers up 10.
"Nebraska really buckled down, started getting to the rim on us, which hadn't happened," Collins later said of this game's final minutes. "Whether it was a little bit of fatigue— we had played such good defense the whole game. For the most part I was really proud of our defense, for 32 minutes. The last eight we had some breakdowns. It was just a tough time for that to happen."
"I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I was fine," Pardon would say when asked if fatigue was an issue. "I just think it was a matter of being locked in mentally. Some of us weren't locked in mentally and that effected the whole team. We just have to do a better job as a whole of locking in mentally when we need to."
The 'Cats, after that Copeland dunk, would never again truly threaten, would never again get closer than seven, and over these last eight minutes would be outscored by 14 on their way to a 15-point defeat. Now, just ahead, is a flight east to Penn State, where they will play Friday evening, and accompanying them on their journey will be uncertainty about their maestro. "I don't know Bryant's status going forward," Collins finally said on Tuesday night.
"Hopefully we'll get him back sooner rather than later."
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska. "To me it was a slugfest, grinder game," Chris Collins would later say.
"Defensively, I thought Northwestern was excellent. There were no good looks for either team early," echoed the Husker coach Tim Miles.
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska even without their injured point Bryant McIntosh, who sat out after getting his left knee buckled four days earlier against Brown. "We understand how much Bryant McIntosh means to Northwestern," Miles would say about that. "He's such an all-around player, floor general. They miss him dearly, no doubt."
That is why, said Collins, "We knew we were going to have to play a (grinder) game like that. We were going to have to defend our tails off. We were going to have to be smart offensively and play through our main guys and get them the looks. For the most part we did that. It was just one of those nights when we didn't shoot the ball very well."
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska even while shooting poorly without their injured point Bryant McIntosh, and with eight minutes remaining they were down just a point.
••••••••••
Bryant McIntosh, of course, is the 'Cat choreographer, the virtuoso who directs their offense, and without him they were like a symphony orchestra stripped of its conductor. "When you take our main creator out," explained Collins, "we become a team that has to score off our offense. That (creating) is not a strength of what a lot of our guys do. They're good players. But when you have a guy like Bryant, he can break you down, he can play pick-and-roll, and obviously that's a big element of what we do. But you have to play with what you have. I'm not making excuses. It's part of the game. Everybody has injuries."
Could he quantify how much easier it was to play Northwestern when it didn't have McIntosh, Miles would be asked.
"I'm not going to say it's ever easy playing Vic Law, Scottie Lindsey, Derek Pardon, with (assistant) Brian James and Chris Collins over there carving you up," he said. "But you just know that you can take some chances that you wouldn't ordinarily take defensively with him (playing). He makes plays and he gets them organized. We thought maybe we could disrupt them a little bit. I don't know if we did."
"I thought they were playing their normal game," Collins would say when asked if the Huskers did anything different in an attempt to disrupt them.
But his 'Cats, of course, could not play their normal game and run their offense through their point, and so here they turned their focus to the wings Law and Lindsey and especially to the center Pardon. "Our main emphasis was get the ball inside. We felt we had a matchup there," Collins later explained. "We wanted to see if they were going to double us or play us straight up in there. For most of the game, they played him straight up and Dererk got the touches, got 18 shots. If you look at our shot distribution, the right guys had the ball."
The right guys, in fact, took 43 of the 'Cats 65 shots, which was the plan. But Pardon dropped just six of his 18 (33.3 percent) on his way to a team-high 17. And Lindsey dropped just four of his 14 (28.6 percent) on his way to a dozen. And Law dropped just two of his 11 (18.2) on his way to eight. "It was just one of those nights when we didn't shoot the ball very well," Collins said, giving voice to the stats, and that was not all. The Huskers, on their part, also blocked 14 'Cat shots while holding them to just 29.2 percent shooting overall, to just 28.6 percent shooting on their threes.
Still. Still. Still. The six-foot-seven Law did an admirable job controlling the six-foot Husker star point Glynn Watson, and the 'Cats defended ardently enough to limit them to 28.6 shooting in the first half (eight-of-28). In these 20 minutes too they bounced back from five down at 13:39 to up six at 9:33, from down three at 3:54 to up five at halftime, and as the second half unfolded they again refused to blink in (to quote Collins) this slugfest, this grinder game of stare down.
They refused to blink and, following a baby jumper by Pardon, they were down just a point as the clock ticked under eight.
••••••••••
The 'Cats competed Tuesday night at Allstate in their return to Big Ten play against Nebraska, but now, just 16 seconds after Dererk Pardon has pulled them to within one, Husker guard Anton Gill goes up for a three from the right side of the arc. Scottie Lindsey, in pursuit, flies at him, but Gill drops his shot even while getting fouled and then hits his free throw to finish off a four-point play.
"I thought they got a lot of energy from that," Collins will say, and now this game turns irrevocably in the Huskers' favor. After Lindsey answers with a jumper in the lane, they get one of their own from their forward Isaac Copeland, and now comes this. A missed three by Law and a pair of free throws by Husker point Watson. One-of-two from the line by Pardon and a conventional three-point play by Copeland. Another one-of-two from the line by Pardon and a Copeland dunk at 5:41 that puts the Huskers up 10.
"Nebraska really buckled down, started getting to the rim on us, which hadn't happened," Collins later said of this game's final minutes. "Whether it was a little bit of fatigue— we had played such good defense the whole game. For the most part I was really proud of our defense, for 32 minutes. The last eight we had some breakdowns. It was just a tough time for that to happen."
"I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I was fine," Pardon would say when asked if fatigue was an issue. "I just think it was a matter of being locked in mentally. Some of us weren't locked in mentally and that effected the whole team. We just have to do a better job as a whole of locking in mentally when we need to."
The 'Cats, after that Copeland dunk, would never again truly threaten, would never again get closer than seven, and over these last eight minutes would be outscored by 14 on their way to a 15-point defeat. Now, just ahead, is a flight east to Penn State, where they will play Friday evening, and accompanying them on their journey will be uncertainty about their maestro. "I don't know Bryant's status going forward," Collins finally said on Tuesday night.
"Hopefully we'll get him back sooner rather than later."