ROSEMONT, Ill. – DePaul guard Draelon Burns missed a shot for the lead with 15 seconds left. But forward Karron Clarke was able to deflect the rebound off a Northwestern player and out of bounds, giving DePaul one more chance for victory.
Burns did not miss the second time.
He drove to the free throw line and shot over junior guard Craig Moore with 6.3 seconds to play, giving the Blue Demons a one-point lead.
Junior guard Sterling Williams attacked the basket on the other end, but Clarke deflected the layup attempt. Neither team could recover the ball as time expired, giving DePaul a 54-53 win at Allstate Arena on Saturday against NU.
“Anytime you’re on the road and it’s that close late in the game, it’s exactly where you want to be,” senior guard Jason Okrzesik said. “It’s so frustrating to be on the road, you’ve got to be able to pull that one out. It’s right where we want to be next time, we just got to do it. We (have) got to pull it out.”
Freshman guard Michael Thompson followed his impressive performance in his first career game with an outstanding game in his second outing. He scored 24 points on 8-for-14 shooting and was 3 for 5 from beyond the arc.
But the Cats (0-2) played without Thompson in the closing minutes of the game.
Thompson fouled out with 3:19 left when he drove the baseline and was called for charging with the game tied at 47.
“It was very tough for me to be on the bench for the last few minutes of the game,” Thompson said. “But I have confidence in the rest of my teammates. So I told Jason Okrzesik that he’s a senior so he has to lead us and step up for us, which he did a great job of doing at the end when I fouled out.”
NU continued to fight DePaul (1-1) to the end even without their young and energetic playmaker.
Okrzesik and Blue Demons guard Will Walker traded 3’s with about two minutes to play to tie the game at 50. Walker scored a layup to put DePaul up 52-50 with one minute to play. But Okrzesik answered him out of a timeout with a double-clutch 3-pointer off the backboard to swing NU into a one-point lead.
The senior scored six of his nine points after Thompson fouled out.
“It was a big part for him to come out,” Okrzesik said. “We all came together and (said) we’ve got to pull this one out. When a guy who is leading the whole way goes out, we’ve got to step up. We stepped up, I guess it wasn’t far enough because we didn’t get it done.”
Okrzesik scored nine points and Moore added nine points and six assists.
The Blue Demons outrebounded the Cats 46-26 and grabbed 18 offensive rebounds. The 18th one proved to be the fatal one that gave the Blue Demons a second chance at taking the lead and winning the game.
DePaul scored 10 second-chance points and 16 points in the paint, taking advantage of its size.
The Cats had zero second-chance points.
“They were relentless on the backboards,” Carmody said. “That has always been a problem of ours, keeping guys off the boards. We’ve got a small team out there. It came down to the last play. It went out of bounds and gave them the opportunity for the last shot.”
And with a second chance, DePaul sent NU to its first 0-2 start since 1978.
Reach Philip Rossman-Reich at [email protected].
