For the game’s first 35 minutes, Northwestern cruised to a 14-point lead and had an answer for every big play a struggling No. 20 Illinois team could muster.
When the Illini began to apply full-court pressure, it was the Wildcats that had no answer and found themselves on the wrong side of a 60-59 outcome on Thursday at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
“We were thirsty, and we wanted it more than Northwestern,” Illinois guard Demetri McCamey said. “We just made a lot more plays down the stretch than they did.”
The biggest of those plays came from McCamey himself. With his team down one and 14.6 seconds left on the clock, Illinois coach Bruce Weber called for a double ball screen where forward Mike Davis would slip to the basket.
But Davis wasn’t looking for the ball. McCamey decided to pass it to guard Trent Meacham, who drove into the lane and kicked the ball back out to McCamey. The sophomore took a couple of dribbles, pulled up and nailed a mid-range bank shot to give the Illini their first lead of the game with 2.9 seconds left.
It was the only lead that mattered.
“They’ve allowed teams back in games before,” Weber said. “We found a way to win a game we probably shouldn’t have won.”
NU (13-9, 4-7 Big Ten) started the game on a tear. The Cats beat the Illini on two backdoor cuts in the first four minutes, and 3-pointers from freshman forward John Shurna and classmate Luka Mirkovic gave the squad a 10-2 lead.
Mirkovic started for the first time in his collegiate career and responded with a big game. Playing in front of a sold-out crowd that featured packed student sections behind each basket, the center notched 14 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and dished four assists.
“We felt like we could run through anything we wanted,” said junior forward Kevin Coble of the game’s first 35 minutes. “We could score, and it was really never a problem for us.”
On the other hand, Illinois (20-5, 8-4) found the opposite to be true. Though it shot 48.1 percent from the field, the team missed 10 of its 12 attempts from the charity stripe.
The last five minutes were a different story. Facing the Illinois trap, NU could manage just two points in that time frame. Meanwhile, the visitors poured in 17 points in the closing minutes.
Mirkovic, the Cats’ star for much of his 35 minutes of action, showed his inexperience when the press began to get tighter. Desperate for an open body, NU would find the freshman open in the backcourt. But rather than quickly advancing the ball forward, Mirkovic would wrap the ball up and draw a triple team. Left with no other option, the center called for two timeouts in the final stretch of the game.
“No one’s given us a hard time on the press all year,” Coble said. “A timeout is better than a turnover.”
The Cats could certainly have used an extra timeout in the final three seconds of the game. When McCamey hit the eventual game winner, NU had zero timeouts remaining, and senior guard Craig Moore was forced to launch a desperation attempt from mid-court at the buzzer.
The blown lead brings back haunting memories of the Cats’ last-second lost to then-No. 19 Purdue. NU also led for much of that game, but came away with a loss thanks to missed free throws and layups in the closing minute.
“It was a little bit of a step backwards for us in terms of how we played and how we handled a situation like that,” Coble said.
