MADISON, Wis. – Northwestern freshman point guard Jitim Young proved Sunday he can compete with the best players in the Big Ten, scoring 14 points and hustling for six rebounds.
Unfortunately for Young, the rest of his team didn’t prove anything against No. 19 Wisconsin, making only six shots from the floor in 41 attempts.
The Wildcats hit just three shots in the entire first half – all Young layups – and let the Badgers run away with a 59-37 win in front of 17,142 fans at the Kohl Center.
“Yeah, they’re a good team, but you never know unless you play as hard as you can,” Young said. “And I don’t think all of us played as hard as we can from the beginning of the game until the game was over. We never gave ourselves a chance to compete with them.”
Wisconsin’s vaunted defense shut down NU’s offense, holding it to 16 first-half points. The Cats came in expecting to shoot three-pointers to offset the Badgers’ tough interior defense, and the strategy allowed the Cats many open looks.
But of the 30 treys NU attempted, only four went in – all of them in the last 8:34 of the game.
“If we were going to be in the game at all we were going to have to make shots,” said NU coach Bill Carmody, who saw his team fall behind 22-5 after almost 15 minutes of play. “I know there were enough open shots that you could be in the game a little longer.
“We really haven’t established anything all year inside or outside. Inside, outside – I don’t know where else we can get shots.”
Unless the Cats (9-17, 1-12 Big Ten) find a way to shoot better than they did – 15.8 percent in the first half and 20.8 percent for the game – it’ll be difficult to outscore anyone, much less Wisconsin and its top-ranked defense in the nation.
“It’s kind of hard,” Young said. “You can say as much as you want, but if they don’t believe, they’ll just keep missing. We have to learn to mix it up more. We can’t just be a team that lives behind the three-point line.”
The Badgers (16-7, 7-5) upset the Cats’ offense from the outset. Junior center Tavaras Hardy threw away the ball on NU’s first possession, junior guard Collier Drayton was whistled for a three-second violation on its second possession – and NU’s offensive troubles snowballed from there.
With two minutes left in the first half, the Cats had scored 10 points. They also had 10 turnovers – and just three were on Wisconsin steals. The rest came courtesy of NU mistakes, be they traveling violations or untimely passes.
Injuries continued to hamper the Cats. Drayton sprained an ankle during practice on Friday, and Winston Blake – bothered by lingering injuries in his right leg, ankle and foot – scored only five points.
Because the Cats had trouble getting into an offensive rhythm, they rarely found easy shots underneath. NU scored 14 points in the paint for the game – compared with Wisconsin’s 28 – and instead depended on outside shots that never fell.
“Right now,” Wisconsin coach Brad Soderberg said, “they just don’t have the personnel to fit the system. Once they get it, they’ll be a hard assignment.”
In a little more than a week after their first conference win in more than two years, the Cats have lost to Indiana and Wisconsin by a combined 46 points. NU’s next contest could be a major indication of how much improvement the team has made when it faces Penn State for the second time this season.
The Cats blew a 14-point second-half lead on Jan. 13 at Penn State, and the upcoming matchup will be the Cats’ second-to-last home game of the year.
