Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims are among the top four scorers in the Big Ten. On Tuesday, neither was among the top four scorers in Michigan’s 67-52 loss to Northwestern.
‘It was good to be able to shut them down,’ freshman guard Drew Crawford said. ‘It just shows we can play with anybody.’
The pair entered the contest averaging a combined 36.7 points per game, but the Wildcats held the duo to 15 points on 6-for-23 shooting. It was the lowest total for the two this year.
‘We did a pretty good job on Sims and Manny,’ coach Bill Carmody said. ‘I don’t think we did anything special. We had a good scouting report from coach (Tavaras) Hardy.’
The Cats have had a habit of getting beat by the opposing team’s best players in Big Ten play. But this game was different for NU.
Harris, the conference’s leading scorer, was never able to get anything going-he had already missed three shots and turned the ball over twice by the time he was able to put the ball in the basket. The Cats’ zone lured Harris into shooting seven 3-pointers, an ideal outcome for NU since he’s only a 28.9 percent long-range shooter. Though the junior guard was able to blow by his less-athletic defenders and get to the basket, he wasn’t able to finish at the rim thanks to the Cats’ interior defense. His 11 points were his second-lowest individual output of the season.
While Harris’ struggles were largely due to poor shot selection, Sims had problems of a different nature. Michigan’s senior big man was outplayed by sophomore center Luka Mirkovic on both ends.
‘(Sims) had a tough night,’ Michigan coach John Beilein said.
Carmody often theorizes the way to stop opposing centers offensively is to make them work defensively, like Illinois’ Mike Tisdale did against NU two weeks ago. The Cats employed a similar strategy to stop Sims.
When NU had the ball, Mirkovic frequently received passes over a fronting Sims, leading to a slew of easy baskets. Mirkovic finished with 12 points, most of them on uncontested layups.
‘We got the ball inside to Luka in the first half,’ Carmody said.’ ‘When you get the ball down to him, it makes his defender think about something else because he’s a very talented guy.’
On offense, Sims couldn’t get post position on Mirkovic for most of the night-and when he did, there was help, such as when senior guard Jeremy Nash came from nowhere to get a weak-side block on a low-post layup.’
‘Mirkovic has really improved,’ Beilein said. ‘He really plays great post defense, and they always had another helper in there.’
Sims’ four-point performance was his worst of the season, and it marked only the fifth time either Harris or Sims failed to reach double figures.’
While the Cats’ scheme was responsible for some of Harris’ and Sims’ poor performances, they were also fortunate to play two of the conference’s best players on one of their worst nights.
‘They missed someshots,’ Carmody said. ‘You’ve got to say that.’ [email protected]
