Ruthie Young made a rare appearance at Welsh-Ryan Arena Saturdayafternoon, but her presence wasn’t enough to push her grandson’s squad to victory.
“She never gets to come to games because all the games are on churchdays,” said Jitim Young, who was honored by Northwestern before playinghis final regular season home game. “For her to be there and walk acrossthe court that I’ve played on my entire career, it was awesome.”
With his grandmother looking on for just the third time in his career, Young scored the Wildcats’ first seven points. But both Young and Northwestern (13-14, 8-8 Big Ten) cooled off by the second half, as the Cats dropped their second game of the season to Michigan (17-10, 8-8), 63-56.
Despite the loss, the Cats finished the regular season with a .500 Big Ten record, giving them their best conference winning percentage since the 1967-68 campaign. NU, however, fell short of a winning overall record and has yet to qualify for the National Invitational Tournament.
To make the postseason, they’ll need at least two victories in the Big Ten Tournament, which starts Thursday in Indianapolis, Ind. As thetournament’s sixth seed, the Cats will play in the first round againstPenn State on Thursday evening.
But NU will have to improve their shooting prowess to compete in theconference tournament.
On Saturday, after falling behind by just one at the half (32-31) theCats couldn’t make their shots following the intermission.
For the game, they shot 35.1 percent from the field and 21.7 percentfrom beyond the arc. In the second half, NU converted just 1 of 12three-pointers.
The Cats had several wide-open looking after the break, but couldn’tcapitalize. With 2:19 remaining in the game and NU trailing by five,guard T.J. Parker made a backdoor layup and drew a foul. He nailed thefree throw to pull the Cats to within three points.
“T.J. made some nice plays in there but we just didn’t have enough,”coach Bill Carmody said. “This game, the way I look at it, comes down alot to shooting the ball and we just didn’t shoot the ball that well.”
After Parker’s free throw, NU would get no closer. Davor Duvancic had a chance late in the game to put the Cats up by one, but missed hisuncontested shot from the top of the key.
Young paced NU in points (20), rebounds (5) and steals (4). Vukusic also finished in double figures, with 13 points on 4-for-16 shooting. Parker scored 14 points.
Carmody said he’d miss Young, who has started every game of hisfour-year career.
“He knows how I feel about that,” Carmody said. “The other night, Iwanted to kiss the guy and he said he’d settle for a hug …”
“I love that guy.”
