Northwestern walked off the court Sunday at No. 14 Indiana after hanging tough with one of the best teams in the conference for more than half the game. The Wildcats knew the game was a sign of progress.
NU went on the road and went toe-to-toe with the best the Big Ten has to offer. But it is still burdened with the loss and still searching for its first conference win despite the encouraging play.
NU has played eight Big Ten teams and has not yet earned a victory. Now they will start seeing some familiar faces in search of its first win.
“(The Indiana game) shows that we can beat anybody in the conference,” junior guard Craig Moore said. “We’ve just got play the same way we do against the top-tier teams against the lower-tier teams. We’ve just got to bring it every night.”
The Cats (7-12, 0-8 Big Ten) face only two more opponents they have not yet played-Iowa and Purdue.
NU reaches the halfway point of the conference schedule when the team hosts Minnesota (13-7, 3-5) tonight.
The Cats lost to the Golden Gophers 82-63 at Minneapolis on Jan. 9. Minnesota used a full-court pressure defense that rattled NU early and led to a 13-point halftime deficit.
Coach Bill Carmody said the team has to be able to handle the full-court pressure better. But he felt more comfortable giving the team a day off Monday because of its familiarity with Minnesota.
He said teams do not change a lot between the two games. NU has to execute what it already knows and make adjustments.
“Both teams learn about individual players and how the team works,” Carmody said. “Now you are just trying to figure out how you beat that team, and they are trying to figure out what adjustments you make.”
NU will have to make changes to earn some wins in the second half of the conference season. The team has lost Big Ten games by an average of more than 15 points per game. The Cats closest defeat was a 10-point loss to Michigan at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Jan. 12.
How the team played previously against teams helps the players prepare for the second game, but the first meeting is not necessarily an indicator of how the team will do the second time.
Junior guard Sterling Williams said previous games allow the Cats to see how different teams will play them in a rematch, preparing the players for the type of game they will face.But he said how they played in the first game has no bearing on how the team will play the second time.
NU has struggled in conference before under Carmody. The Cats went 0-8 to start the Big Ten season in Carmody’s first season in 2001. They finished 3-13, defeating two teams they had lost to in their first meeting. NU started 0-7 in 2003 but finished 3-13 and won a Big Ten tournament game.
Just winning can make confidence on the team soar and make all the work in practice and moral victories truly meaningful.
“We definitely haven’t given up,” Williams said. “We’re confident we can get a win. If anything, the first win would help us going forward, knowing we can win.
“The problem is when you lose a lot of games, is you start to get down on yourself. You start to question different things and everything adds up. The first win will help us feel good about ourselves as a team, moving forward.”
All NU might need is a second chance at one team to help them turn the corner.
Reach Philip Rossman-Reich at [email protected]
