IOWA CITY, Iowa – Rooting for Northwestern’s men’s basketball team is like rooting for Charlie Brown to kick the football.
You hope with all your might he finally outsmarts Lucy and gets his foot on the ball. But you know it’s not going to happen.
The Wildcats are now 0-13 in the Big Ten after Tuesday’s 53-51 loss to Iowa, and they’ve lost those games in 13 different ways.
This one surely hurt the most.
For the first time all year, NU had a conference opponent on the ropes late in the game. Behind Craig Moore’s hot shooting, the Cats reeled off a 14-3 run to take a 36-22 lead with just more than 12 minutes remaining in the contest.
720 seconds. That’s all that stood between the team and Big Ten win No. 1. But the Cats just couldn’t make it happen.
The collapse unfolded in three acts. First, there was the freefall.
NU let the lead slip away as quickly as it had grabbed it. The implosion took barely five minutes, as the Cats were suddenly porous on defense and ice-cold on offense.
Hawkeyes’ forward Cyrus Tate became a manchild in the paint, scoring layup after layup and forcing NU to abandon its otherwise successful 2-3 zone. At the same time, the Cats’ offensive attack stalled; the team started missing its outside shots and squandering possessions with costly turnovers.
When the dust settled, the lead was completely gone, and NU trailed 40-39. It looked like Iowa was going to run away with the game and send the Cats to another double-digit loss.
But that would have been too easy to swallow. Not painful enough.
Displaying a resilience not seen in earlier conference games, the Cats launched into the second act: the valiant comeback. Time and time again, the Hawkeyes were on the brink of putting the game away. But NU kept rallying.
Successive layups by Kevin Coble, Moore, and Michael Thompson kept the Iowa lead at less than five points. Then, with the Cats trailing 51-45 and seemingly down for the count, Coble and Moore drained back-to-back 3s to bring the team to within 53-51.
It was an inspired effort. It kept the Hawkeye faithful in their seats, biting their nails. But in the end, it merely set the stage for the final heartbreaking act: the defeat.
Twice in the final 15 seconds, Moore had a 3-pointer to put the Cats ahead. Both shots clanged off the front rim, an inch short of victory.
After the second miss, the clock hit all zeros, the horn sounded, and Moore buried his head in his hands. The guard had given it everything he had, and his team still had fallen just short.
“It’s about as rough of a loss as you can get,” coach Bill Carmody said after the game, his voice barely above a whisper.
Watching the Cats walk off the court as the Hawkeye faithful celebrated, you couldn’t help but feel for them. On this night, the players left it all on the court. They weathered a potentially backbreaking comeback and kept it close until the final buzzer. And they hung tough despite an increasingly raucous Iowa crowd.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” Moore and his teammates won’t remember how inspired their second half play was or how resilient they were in the final, frantic minutes.
They’ll remember that they lost.
Assistant sports editor Jake Simpson is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
