With 5:35 left in the first half, a glance at the scoreboard would have shown the Northwestern men’s basketball team down 17-13 to a Boilermaker.
If only the game were really five-on-one.
At that point, the Boilermakers held a 30-13 edge. Seventeen of those points belonged to Rodney Smith, the Boilermakers’ forward.
Smith entered the game leading Purdue (10-3, 2-0 Big Ten) in scoring with 15.8 points per game. And he showed why.
When Smith drained an 8-foot jumper for his first bucket 1:30 into Saturday’s 69-61 win over NU, the 6-foot-6 junior began a scoring barrage that buried the Cats (7-7, 0-2) in the first half. His final totals of 21 points and seven rebounds squashed any chance of an NU upset.
“Rod’s a tremendous player,” said Purdue center John Allison, who had 18 points. “He can go inside-outside, and that versatility helps every one of us out.
“Teams don’t really know how to guard him. He blew up in the first half.”
Allison couldn’t have been more correct. The Cats’ defensive schemes always assigned a number of defenders to Smith. But between man-to-man and zone defenses, NU could not find a player to stop him in the first half.
Smith’s size and quickness contributed to his success – NU didn’t have a player to match his post and perimeter skills.
Guards Ben Johnson, Collier Drayton and Jitim Young – all 6-foot-2 – forward Jason Burke (6-foot-6) and center Tavaras Hardy (6-foot-7) all spent time covering Smith.
“He’s a little quicker than our big guys, and once he sees a guy that’s 6 feet on him he just takes it down low, spins and goes up in the air with it,” NU coach Bill Carmody said, explaining his team’s inability to find a good matchup.
Carmody’s strategy hampered Smith as the game wore on. After raining points on NU in the first half, Smith did a virtual disappearing act in the second.
“It was tough because they switched every time and kept me off-balance on offense,” Smith said. “I had to just slow down a little.”
For 16 minutes in the second half, Smith slowed down too much. He didn’t score a point, and NU narrowed the Purdue lead to six. But just when Smith was becoming a non-factor, the ball found its way into his hands.
Nestled in the left corner with three and a half minutes left, Smith pump-faked to get NU guard Winston Blake in the air, took two dribbles along the baseline and rammed home a dunk that brought Purdue fans to their feet and effectively ended the game.
“It got us and our crowd section going, the bench going and everybody else’s adrenaline going,” Smith said. “That might have been the dagger.”
After that dunk, the Cats never brought the deficit within six points, and two more Smith free throws helped ice the eight-point win.
The dunk that sealed the game was especially sweet for Smith, since he had bricked an earlier wide-open attempt. But even that first-half miss turned out well for Smith – he grabbed the ball and dropped it back in, also taking a foul on the score.
For Smith, it was a day when everything seemed to go his way.
“I was feeling it out there, playing loose,” he said.
