MADISON, Wis. – On the surface, Northwestern can take a sort of moral victory away from its latest foray to the Kohl Center to face Wisconsin.
The Wildcats went into hostile territory, a place in which the Badgers have lost only six times in the last seven years, and held up well against the No. 17 team in the nation.
The Cats didn’t embarrass themselves on the glass, being outrebounded 29-21, not a terrible margin for this team. They certainly didn’t embarrass themselves on the scoreboard – the 62-50 final was par for the course for a team that is undefeated in conference play taking on a team that has yet to taste its first Big Ten win.
NU even outscored Wisconsin in the paint and off the bench, which can be seen as minor miracles.
So why did everyone look so glum after the game?
“We hung around a little bit,” NU coach Bill Carmody said. “But we just couldn’t quite get them to the point where they felt uncomfortable.”
There it is.
No matter how close NU got (it even led for a total of 3:41), it always seemed like it was just a matter of time until the Badgers woke up and buried the Cats.
NU was able to make Wisconsin play at its tempo in the first half.
A typical Cats’ possession ran like this: bring the ball up the court, run around behind the 3-point line until there are about 10 seconds left on the shot clock, pass into the post, pass it back out, dribble and hoist up a frantic shot as the shot clock is about to expire.
And the crazy thing was, Wisconsin was content to mirror this behavior. Not only did the Badgers milk each possession, but their guards turned a blind eye to what was going on in the post, where the vagaries of NU’s 1-3-1 zone often left 6-foot-11 forward Brian Butch matched up one-on-one against someone like, oh, 5-foot-10 guard Michael Thompson.
What resulted was a 22-20 Badgers lead at halftime, after a period in which the teams combined to take 39 shots. That’s one shot every 30.8 seconds.
That’s the NBA circa 1953, when the set shot was king.
Then, Wisconsin decided it was tired of playing ugly basketball.
The Badgers went on an 8-0 run in the first 3:58 of the second half (it took them 7:39 to breach the vaunted eight-point barrier in the first half) and built a 10-point cushion that the Cats could not deflate.
“It got away from us a little bit,” said Thompson, who led NU with 16 points and five assists. “They controlled the game and it went to their tempo, which is not what we wanted to do.”
Basically, the Badgers had another gear and the Cats did not.
This is not to say that NU didn’t try in the second half.
Despite being woefully undersized, the Cats scrapped for rebounds and had a fairly effective defensive trap beyond the 3-point arc. But the Badgers could always just count on one of their forwards being under the basket to clean up the offensive glass on their errant shots.
On the defensive end, the Badgers kept up the pressure on the perimeter, silencing NU’s snipers and forcing the Cats to drive, an unusual concept for those versed in the Princeton Offense.
While Thompson and senior Jason Okrzesik benefitted from these looks in the paint, they did not come often enough to spur the comeback.
So how can the Cats answer when opposing teams start using their obvious athletic edge to supersede the strength of NU’s game plan?
That’s something the Cats need to figure out before the season gets fully away from them. Because there has to be something more than just sticking around and hoping the other team doesn’t wake up in time to win.
Assistant sports editor David Morrison is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
