Collier Drayton picked one hell of a game for his return to Welsh-Ryan Arena.
The starting point guard of last year’s team has seen this year’s version of the Wildcats in practice, but he hadn’t watched a game until Saturday’s exciting and exhausting victory over Penn State.
“There were a lot of mistakes,” he said, “but it was good for them to gain the experience of being in a game like that.”
It’s particularly good going into the Big Ten Tournament, which starts March 13. Last year the Cats lost three straight going into the tournament. That momentum carried over into the Cats’ first-round loss to Michigan, which effectively ended their postseason before it began.
NU can win both games remaining on its schedule — vs. Ohio State on Wednesday, at Iowa on Saturday — and if they do, they might have enough momentum for a few upsets in this year’s conference tourney.
But if nothing else, a win over Penn State in a bipolar game of manic scoring runs and depressive droughts will go a long way toward making the Cats mentally tougher.
For Northwestern, the up-and-down game was just a continuation of a year-long trend. The Wildcats have had runs when basketballs rained through the hoop like the tempest that stranded Alonso on Prospero’s island. But those high, heady runs — much like dotcoms in the late 1990s — always have come crashing down. The Cats’ battle all season has been trying to make the runs outlast the droughts.
For most of the season they’ve failed. But on Saturday they came through.
It started with 14 minutes left in the second half. From that point on, the teams never traded baskets for more than one possession. It was a see-saw battle of long and short scoring runs that didn’t end until Penn State ran out of ticks on the clock at the end of the second overtime.
“They never gave up,” NU coach Bill Carmody said. “Every time we tried to put the game away, they always came back.”
It started six minutes into the second half. With the score knotted at 36, Jitim Young scored nine of the Cats’ next 15 points to put NU up 51-39. Young was moving faster than everyone else on court, getting behind the Penn State defense for fast-break layups and firing a two-seam fastball across the court to T.J. Parker for another easy deuce.
But then the pendulum swung back. The Nittany Lions went on a blistering 18-2 run. NU didn’t help, with several head-slappingly stupid turnovers.
NU clawed back with free throws and took the lead, 59-58. Then senior Jason Burke, playing in his second-to-last home game, had one of the best two-possession performances ever in a purple-and-white jersey. He skied for a rebound, then landed with two Nittany Lions on his back and his knee slamming into the ground. Burke hobbled across the court to sink two free throws, and on Penn State’s next possession, he swatted a Brandon Cameron layup to half court, where Young scooped it up and took it in for a layup and foul with just 47 seconds left.
That should have been the end. Of course, it wasn’t. Penn State went on a 7-2 run to tie the game and send it into overtime.
In the first overtime, NU went on a 5-0 run, then let the Nittany Lions climb back by missing three free throws during a 6-1 Penn State run.
Playing 50 minutes was physically exhausting for the Cats, but keeping their composure when Penn State was controlling long stretches of the game was even more exhausting mentally.
And with the Big Tens just 10 days away, it might have been just what the Cats needed.
Dan Murtaugh is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
