Starting his first game as Northwestern’s all-time 3-point leader, Craig Moore approached another record in Saturday’s 73-64 victory at Brown.
He hit eight shots from downtown in the first half and another one in the second half to tie the conference’s all-time mark for 3-pointers in a game with nine. Moore finished the game with 31 points on 11-of-15 shooting.
“It was the combination of just a really good offense,” Moore said. “I was on the receiving end of a lot of good passes; we ran some set plays for me after I started to get hot. I should shoot like that every other game or more.
The Wildcats (3-0) jumped out of the gate to a 22-point halftime lead. Moore scored 24 points before the break – two fewer than the entire Bears’ squad.
NU shot at a 60 percent clip, including nearly 69 percent from behind the arc. Freshman center Kyle Rowley had a perfect shooting night and netted six points, and sophomore guard Michael Thompson, freshman forward John Shurna and junior forward Kevin Coble combined for 30 more.
While the team was clicking in the first half, the second half was a different story.
The offense shot well, but not so well as in the first half. But it was NU’s defense that slipped most severely. Brown shot better than 70 percent from the field and outscored the Cats 38-25 in the second half.
The Bears (1-3) came out and slowly chipped away at the Cats’ substantial lead. With 5:34 left in the game, Brown guard Chris Skelja dropped in a jumper to become the fifth Bear to score in double figures, rounding out a balanced offensive attack. That field goal also cut the NU lead to six points.
“They made some adjustments on offense,” Moore said. “They didn’t really slow us down offensively, we kept scoring. But we didn’t stop them, and that’s something we’ve got to look at and figure out what happened on defense.”
The Bears pounded the ball inside and the Cats had no answer in the second half. Brown was sent to the line for 11 free-throw attempts and the team sunk all but two of them to help spark its comeback.
But freshmen center Luka Mirkovic would not let the lead get slimmer than five points. Carmody said he rewarded Mirkovic with 14 minutes of playing time in the second half because he liked what he saw from the freshman in limited first-half action. Mirkovic drew a foul inside and hit a free throw to extend NU’s lead to seven. Then a layup by Moore sandwiched between two Thompson baskets allowed the Cats to regain control, and they pulled away for the nine-point victory.
Though NU did advance to 3-0 for the first time in 15 years, Moore said this game, and especially the second half, highlighted some of the team’s weaknesses.
“We’ve got to learn how to guard the post, we got beat up,” he said. “There are going to be teams just like that in the Big Ten and we need to be able to handle them in the post and not let them shoot 60 percent for a game. We’ve got to figure out how we can make adjustments and be strong in there.”