By Abe RakovThe Daily Northwestern
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Northwestern will never be confused for a team that can even hold its own on the boards, but Wednesday night’s first half was embarrassing.
NU corralled one rebound for every five Michigan State grabbed in the first 20 minutes.
The Cats haven’t been a good rebounding team most of the Bill Carmody era, as the Princeton Offense keeps players away from the basket and the 1-3-1 defense also hampers the rebounding effort, but 21-4 is ridiculous.
“They just destroyed us on the backboards,” Carmody said. “I don’t think we can do anything about the rebounding.”
The Spartans missed eight shots in the first half and had two missed free throws with rebound opportunities. So with 10 chances, NU managed two rebounds on defense.
On the offensive end, NU missed 16 shots in the first half and managed all of two rebounds.
“I don’t care that much about offensive rebounds,” Carmody said. “I know we aren’t going to get them anyway.”
NU finished the night with about one-third the rebounds of Michigan State.
It was pure domination, as the Spartans had 16 offense rebounds to the Cats’ 13 total.
Normally the Cats can concede that they’re going to be out-rebounded by 10 or so, but not when they barely score more than a point a minute.
The fact that NU was only behind 32-22 after the first half shows how truly down Michigan State is this year. Give last year’s terrific trio of Shannon Brown, Maurice Ager and Paul Davis a 17-rebound advantage in the first half and the game is over (not that NU mounted anything close to a second-half comeback).
The Spartans are physical inside, but have nothing on offense but Drew Neitzel. The squad doesn’t have a single senior. Unless coach Tom Izzo is the best coach in college basketball (which is a possibility), the Spartans will probably struggle to finish with eight Big Ten wins – a very average mark for the program in East Lansing.
This is not good news for NU.
So far this season’s Cats couldn’t compete with average Penn State, lost to an OK Michigan team by 12 at home and were manhandled by a middle-of-the-road squad in Michigan State.
NU isn’t a bad team, it’s just playing poorly right now. But if the Cats continue to miss shot after shot and get out-rebounded by embarrassing numbers, bad will come pretty quickly.
Basketball Editor Abe Rakov is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
