CHICAGO – The signing of high school All-American Amy Jaeschke was big news for the Wildcats during the offseason.

For a team that had only won 19 games in the three previous seasons, it was also sort of a coup – one of the best players in the country suiting up for … not one of the best teams.

But after Jaeschke broke her hand in her first game for NU, it all seems like a cruel joke.

“It doesn’t matter who we don’t have,” coach Beth Combs said. “It matters who we have.”

The Wildcats “don’t have” a 6-foot-5 game-changer who scored 19 points in 25 minutes in her first collegiate game.

That’s a big piece to not have.

You could definitely see the effects of Jaeschke’s absence in the Cats’ 53-45 loss to Illinois-Chicago on Wednesday.

They just couldn’t get anything going in the paint.

Every time the ball would go in there, it would either be flailed haphazardly up at the rim, or else muffed, bobbled and turned over to the Flames.

Illinois-Chicago was able to make NU shoot from the outside.

And when that’s the case, bad things happen.

The Cats finished with 30.6-percent shooting, following up a loss against New Mexico on Sunday in which they shot only 26.7 percent.

“They made us out-of-synch,” said sophomore forward Kaitlin McInerney, who performed admirably in the paint, scoring 11 points and pulling down 11 rebounds.

“They did exactly what they’re supposed to do.”

So the question is, what can NU do to stay in synch until Jaeschke, the key to its offense, comes back?

Four to six weeks is a long time for the Cats to just get by on what they have and pray that things will get better once their prize recruit returns.

“As we improve with what we have,” said junior center Ellen Jaeschke, Amy’s cousin, “When she comes back, we’ll be that much better.”

After the game, Combs took some solace in the fact that this was an early season game with a fairly new team – only five of the 11 players who saw action against the Flames last season suited up Wednesday.

But there are a lot of games between now and when Jaeschke returns. And a lot of stuff that needs fixing if the Cats hope to be “that much better.”

“Our biggest problem has been adjusting to the bumps that we’ve had on the road,” McInerney said. “We’ve just stopped at the bumps instead of trying to go over them.”

Sports editor David Morrison is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].