Everything seemed to roll Northwestern’s way in Monday night’s 62-53 victory over Minnesota (18-9, 10-6 Big Ten). It was the first time the Wildcats (7-20, 3-12) have earned three conference wins since the 2002-03 season.
The Cats led for all but the first 85 seconds of the game, and although they won by nine and led by as much as 16 in the second half, putting away the Golden Gophers wasn’t as easy as the box score would suggest.
With 54 seconds remaining, freshman forward Brittany Orban had a chance to put NU up by nine with two free throws but missed both attempts. Minnesota cut the lead to five with a pair of free throws from sophomore guard Brittany McCoy and then began immediately fouling to stop the clock.
The Cats were perfect at the stripe from then on, hitting their next four free throws to put the game out of reach. For the game, NU finished 16-18 from the foul line.
“I thought we had a few breakdowns in the last three minutes, but I thought we finished the game well, and that was really important,” said coach Joe McKeown.
NU played with more intensity, especially on the defensive end, than it has in recent games. The Cats outrebounded the Gophers 36-27 and held them to only 34 percent shooting. Sophomore center Amy Jaeschke recorded five blocks, and freshman forward Maggie Mocchi added three steals.
NU entered the locker room at halftime up 29-19, but a daunting task remained: keeping the lead throughout the second half. The Cats have led at halftime in 13 other games this season and won just four times.
This time around, the team was not going to let a win slip through its fingers.
“I just think our intensity was up tenfold today, ” said Orban, who led NU with 15 points, her third consecutive game scoring in double digits. “We came out in the first half with a lot of intensity and just really went after it. We know we can play great defense, because we’ve done it before, and tonight we just played for 40 minutes great defense.”
Even when the Cats struggled to score in the second half, at one point going seven minutes without a field goal, they never relinquished the lead. Instead, the team’s stingy defense held the Gophers to a six-minute scoreless stretch of their own.
Still, McKeown would like to do without the sudden bouts of offensive ineptitude.
“They turned it up on defense, and we got a little tentative and played on our heels,” McKeown said of his team’s second-half scoring troubles. “You’ve got to stay aggressive, and we didn’t do that as well as I would have liked. It’s something we’ve got to focus on – staying in attack mode and getting them out of position.”
Jaeschke, NU’s leading scorer, had only 12 points and six rebounds, but she showed great improvement in the paint. The Cats’ center has recently struggled when being double-teamed, but she handled the pressure adeptly against the Gophers and recorded four assists.
“They forced her out,” McKeown said. “They’re physical. They pushed and shoved. She’s not going to get great shots against them, but she sacrificed and got her teammates open looks.”
McKeown knows winning one game doesn’t cure everything. The Cats still have a long way to go in his first year with the program, and the coach is still tweaking his rotation to find the right mix. Senior forward Ellen Jaeschke, who gave the team valuable minutes earlier in the season, was on the bench for all but two minutes of the game.
McKeown said the elder Jaeschke will nonetheless be a factor in the final two games of the season and in the Big Ten tournament, as will key bench player Meshia Reed, who logged only seven minutes in the contest. In McKeown’s first year with the team, things like playing time are prone to change rapidly.
“All those guys have got to help us down the stretch, but as far as fluidity, that hasn’t hit our program yet,” McKeown said. “It’ll be my goal next year.”
