CHAMPAIGN – A losing streak often has as much to do with bad luck as it does with bad basketball.
On Saturday, Northwestern got both.
The Wildcats, forced to play the No. 6 Fighting Illini (17-5, 7-2 Big Ten) after an overtime loss to a mediocre Penn State team, weren’t able to put up a fight on the floor. A 20-0 Illini run early on proved the Cats had no chance of winning, and the Illini then coasted to an 84-59 win in front of a sellout crowd of 16,683 at Assembly Hall. NU (8-14, 0-9) has now lost 31 consecutive Big Ten games.
Illinois, which on Tuesday plays Michigan State, its main competition for the Big Ten title, turned NU into a practice opponent, knocking down shots on offense and blocking them left and right on defense.
“We were mad we lost (to Penn State), but we’re always looking to the next game,” said Brian Cook, the Illini’s 6-foot-10 power forward, who led all scorers with 16.
“They’re really undersized. We all did a pretty good job.”
NU had installed a zone defense to control the Illini’s size and skill on the blocks. But the Cats still couldn’t keep pace in the first half: Illinois shot 65 percent from the field and an astonishing 9-for-14 from three-point range.
The Cats – coming off Wednesday’s triumph over Buffalo, their first win in more than a month – played even with the Illini in their first meeting this season, getting within a point midway through the second half. But center Marcus Griffin’s return – he missed the first game with an injury – and the team’s hot shooting gave NU little hope of victory.
The Cats went 10:12 in the first half without a field goal. Ben Johnson scored a bucket on each end of the dry spell, but the Illini extended a 10-5 lead to a 37-10 laugher before he could hit a 4-foot leaner to bring the Cats back within 25.
In addition to Cook, who went 5-for-7 from the field and hit two three-pointers, Illini guards Frank Williams and Cory Bradford disrupted NU’s rhythm in the early going. Illinois assigned Cook to guard the 6-foot-2 Collier Drayton, and the Cats often began their offense 25 and 30 feet away from the basket – if they got that far without turning over the ball.
“They came out and pressured our wings and our guards a little bit,” said forward Jason Burke, who came off the bench to score a season-high 11 points. “That kind of threw us off. They tried to keep the ball from our center, which is a key part of our offense, so that hurt us.
“We struggled a lot in the first half. Our shots weren’t going down.”
When NU tried to counter the perimeter pressure by forcing the ball inside, Griffin took complete control of the game.
“They got in the passing lanes,” Drayton said. “I tried to take advantage of that by driving to the basket, but when you’ve got Marcus Griffin in the back, it’s not going to be too successful.”
Griffin swatted five shots in the first half, most of them early, and effectively shut down any interior NU offense. Center Tavaras Hardy was only 1-for-7 from the floor, and the Cats shot below 33 percent for the game.
Winston Blake also had another difficult outing. Slowed by an injury to his big toe, NU’s best shooter played 21 minutes, made just one shot from the field and scored only three points, his lowest output of the Big Ten season.
Blake didn’t practice Friday because of the toe, NU coach Bill Carmody said after the game, and Drayton said trainers have not yet determined what the problem is.
Blake’s injury is yet another unfortunate turn for NU, which needs its top scorer to play well if it is to have a chance to win in the conference.
The Cats play home games this week against Minnesota and Iowa – which also has an injured top scorer, Luke Recker, who is out for six weeks with a broken kneecap – before traveling to Indiana on Feb. 14.
