Northwestern had been there before.
Ahead by seven points with three minutes remaining at No. 20 Purdue, the Wildcats were faced with a full court press that conjured memories of a late-game collapse against then-No. 20 Illinois when NU couldn’t advance the ball beyond halfcourt.
On Wednesday, junior forward Kevin Coble and sophomore guard Michael Thompson teamed up to break the Boilermaker press and lead the Cats to a 64-61 victory.
“Coach always says to hold on to your guts,” Coble said. “And that’s exactly what we did tonight. We didn’t let the noise of the crowd or the pressure get to us. It didn’t faze us and we executed just like we do in practice.”
NU (17-11, 8-9 Big Ten) iced the game during a press break situation. Having struggled in the past to escape persistent double teams, the Cats called a timeout with just over a minute remaining. Coming out of the timeout, Thompson threw a long lead pass to Coble, who caught it steps before center court, stopped on a dime to avoid running over Purdue’s Robbie Hummel and threw a pass to a wide-open Luka Mirkovic under the basket. Mirkovic converted an easy layup that put the team ahead by four with less than 30 seconds to play.
The freshman center wasn’t the only player to contribute off the bench. Junior guard Jeff Ryan scored six points and grabbed two offensive rebounds, and junior guard Jeremy Nash played his usual brand of suffocating defense. Senior guard Sterling Williams also scored four important points as part of a 22-3 NU run that brought the team from down 10 to ahead by nine.
But no reserve was bigger than Mirkovic. He scored six points, dished five assists and collected eight rebounds – five on the offensive glass.
“All we do is play close games,” coach Bill Carmody said. “So every extra possession is important to us.”
Initially, the game looked like a blowout. Purdue (22-8, 11-6) built a 10-point lead early in the second half and maintained the advantage for the first six minutes of the frame.
Then senior guard Craig Moore went on a tear. He hit two 3-pointers and added a free throw in a span of four minutes. His seven points, combined with two Coble field goals and a basket by freshman center Kyle Rowley, tied the game at 47.
After a short jumper by Ryan put the Cats up two, Thompson tipped the ball away from Purdue’s Lewis Jackson, dove on the floor to recover it and called timeout.
“When (Thompson) dove and grabbed the ball and called time out, that ignited us,” Coble said. “That really fired everybody up.”
Williams, seldom a scorer for NU, chipped in four consecutive points to extend the lead to six.
“It was just real nice to see the bench guys out there and doing it,” Carmody said. “I was going to take them out and put some more offense out there, but I thought, ‘Hey, are we going to do any better without them?'”
The Boilermakers had built their early lead on pressure defense. The home team shadowed NU players all the way to midcourt, deterring the Cats from getting into their offensive sets early in the shot clock.
But the pressure also drew Jujuan Johnson away from the paint. In the teams’ last meeting, the sophomore center blocked seven shots. This time he hedged outside and got his hand on just one NU attempt, even though the Cats scored the majority of their points in the paint.
NU’s lead began to shrink as time wound down, and the Boilermakers cut the margin to just two points. While the Cats have surrendered leads in several similar situations earlier in the season, on Wednesday they held on.
“I think the Illinois game prepared us for this game,” Thompson said. “And we prevailed tonight.”