By Andrew SimonThe Daily Northwestern
Northwestern plays at Stanford tonight, and it brought its road uniforms and Princeton offense along. But the question is: Which defense is making the trek from Evanston?
Is it the unit that couldn’t stop an Ivy League squad in its first game, or is it the one that held a Big East team to less than 40 points in its second?
This season, the Wildcats have gone only as far as their unpredictable defense has carried them.
“You lose to Cornell and you beat DePaul. It’s crazy,” coach Bill Carmody said.
Playing a rare game in which it held a physical advantage over its first opponent, NU couldn’t capitalize. Cornell didn’t have much success inside but buried NU from 3-point range all night. DePaul shot 48.8 percent overall and knocked down five 3-pointers in each half.
“If you had told me we’d get 61 points, I wouldn’t have thought they’d get 64,” Carmody said after the Cornell loss. “I just felt our defense was very bad. ”
With a young team still learning the system and an athletic DePaul squad coming, there seemed to be little hope for a rapid improvement.
Through the first seven minutes of the game, NU seemed overmatched by DePaul’s athleticism. The Blue Demons built a 9-2 lead on a layup and three dunks.
Despite this disadvantage, the Cats improved quickly, using more man-to-man defense than they had against Cornell. NU made up for a lack of size and strength with good positioning and hustle.
“We don’t have any intimidating presences or guys with big muscles or tattoos,” senior forward Tim Doyle said. “We just knew what they were going to do before they did and we shut them down.”
DePaul still had its share of scoring opportunities but couldn’t capitalize as they shot 34 percent overall and 18.8 percent on 3-pointers.
Because of DePaul’s poor shooting night, Carmody seemed hesitant to express complete confidence in his defense.
“I think our defense has to improve,” Carmody said. “Because if we played that team another time they way we played tonight, a lot of those shots would go down.”
NU will get a chance tonight to show its coach that the defense it played against DePaul was for real.
Stanford averaged 82.5 points per game in its first two contests against Siena and San Jose State, but lost 79-45 to Air Force, which also runs the Princeton Offense.
NU can play with confidence after its success against DePaul.
“Cornell – they outplayed us,” guard Sterling Williams said. “We wanted to step up our intensity level (against DePaul). We still have strides to make, but this was definitely heading in the right direction.”
Reach Andrew Simon at [email protected].
