The Northwestern women’s basketball team has seen some nasty numbers this season: 57, the spread in a Jan. 14 loss to Purdue; zero, the number of conference wins this season; 29, the average deficit in those Big Ten defeats.
But the Wildcats (4-16, 0-10 Big Ten) achieved a new numerical benchmark Thursday night – their brutal losing streak finally hit double digits, equaling the longest drought in team history.
No. 25 Wisconsin (13-7, 7-3) doubled up NU 70-35 in front of 6,397 at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wis., setting up the Cats to make school history Saturday afternoon at home against No. 16 Penn State.
“Kids this age are not patient,” NU coach June Olkowski said. “This is the age of instant everything – instant oatmeal, instant microwaves. So it’s been hard to ask them to work hard, and then we go out and get beat as bad as we get beat.”
A few more numerical nuggets from Thursday’s beating: NU scored 10 points in the first half, and the final tally of 35 points is the team’s lowest output of the season.
The Cats stormed out to a strong start, scoring the first points of the game and trading baskets with Wisconsin throughout the first eight minutes.
But the Cats scored only one point in the remaining 12 minutes of the half, sandwiched between Badgers runs of 13-0 and 8-0.
“We played a good first 15 minutes and then we got in major foul trouble and turned the ball over,” Olkowski said. “We felt we started out well, but then we just fell apart, and that was very disappointing. We felt sorry for ourselves, we lost our focus, and then we threw a pity party.”
Center Leslie Dolland and forward Tami Sears were the lone contributors in the first half, with the rest of the team shooting 0-for-12.
The Cats picked up their shooting in the second half – finding it easy to improve on their 19 percent mark in the first half. But too little came far too late for a team emotionally unable to recover from even the smallest deficit.
“One of the things we talked about with our team was that we didn’t want to be in a ‘horse’ game with them,” Wisconsin coach Jane Albright said. “I thought our perimeter defense was exceptional and really didn’t give them any open looks in transition.”
As the Cats began to fall behind, the turnovers mounted. NU ended the game with 27 turnovers, but a bigger factor was Wisconsin’s ability to capitalize on giveaways. The Badgers stole 29 easy points on NU’s combination of sloppy ball handling, bad passes and shot clock violations.
Even if NU wasn’t playing its best, the team had little chance against one of the tallest frontcourts in the Big Ten. Wisconsin started 6-foot-3 forwards LaTonya Sims and Jessie Stomski and 6-foot-4 forward Nina Smith.
“They’re huge,” Olkowski said. “They’re like a small men’s team.”
The trio created an impenetrable force in the paint and contributed to the mental image of a team impossible to beat.
That mental aspect of the game has been the Cats’ worst enemy throughout the conference season. Shooting percentages and turnover totals aside, NU has been hit by the snowball effect: Close games turn into tiny deficits that morph into blowouts in a matter of minutes.
It’s a problem – commonly referred to this season as the “we get down on ourselves and hang our heads” syndrome – that Olkowski said she can’t fix with a practice drill.
“If I knew (what to do), I would do it,” Olkowski said. “We just have to be consistent and forget about one play and work on the next ball. We think about misplay, and then it affects both ends of our game.
“We try to take small steps. But we took a step backward tonight.”
