For a while, it looked like John Shurna might outscore Iowa by himself.
The sophomore forward couldn’t miss from the start, driving, finishing on alley-oops and hitting from downtown, to record 18 of his 28 points in the first half. Meanwhile the Hawkeyes sputtered, and entered the intermission down 20 after scoring 19 points in the first half.
“Early on it was just the offense flowing well, and my teammates were finding me in scoring position,” Shurna said. “Offensively we’ve been able to find mismatches.”
Iowa (9-19, 3-12 Big Ten) eventually outpaced Shurna, but never managed to catch Northwestern, losing a one-sided contest 74-57. The win was the Wildcats’ 18th of the season, setting a record for the most single-season victories in NU history.
NU (18-10, 7-9) never looked troubled by Iowa at any point in the game. After the Hawkeyes scored the first basket on a layup following a near shot clock violation, the Cats rattled off six straight points and never relinquished the lead.
Iowa looked outmatched early on, turning the ball over 10 times in the opening period. NU played a matchup zone defense with senior Jeremy Nash and junior Michael Thompson occasionally providing three-quarter court pressure, a defensive gameplan that made the Hawkeyes look out of sync. NU forced the Hawkeyes into several traveling violations, a shot clock violation, a three-second violation and multiple offensive fouls.
“Today the matchup was so fun to play in,” Nash said. “The coaches went to work all week on guarding Iowa, and it worked to perfection for us tonight.”
Coach Bill Carmody made a conscious decision to stick with the matchup zone after recently insisting on playing the 1-3-1 zone in losses at Iowa and against Penn State.
“It’s hard to be real aggressive in that-it’s more like you’re guessing and playing passing lanes,” Carmody said. “I wanted to get back to moving our feet and keeping our body in front of the dribbler.”
NU faced no resistance offensively from Iowa. The Cats shot 63 percent in the first half, as Shurna hit 7-of-9 from the field with three 3-pointers.
Shurna’s shooting opened up the inside for the Cats, as they were able to exploit the overplaying Hawkeyes for backdoor cuts, finishing the game with 21 assists.
“We were not able to dictate at all defensively,” Iowa coach Todd Lickliter said. “If you deny anything out of the 3-point line or beyond, you get backdoored, so you better stay back and watch the backdoor, but we weren’t able to do that.”
The Cats were up 20 as early as the seven-minute mark of the first half, and entered the break ahead 39-19. From there, the Cats just had to hold on.
“You do not want to come from behind against Northwestern,” Lickliter said. “They don’t turn it over, they backdoor you, they’re patient, so it’s a team that you’ve got to execute early on and for whatever reason, early, we were not able to execute.”
NU built its lead up to as much as 25 over the course of the second half, but sloppy play allowed Iowa to cut its deficit to 12 with 3:58 left. But it didn’t end up costing the Cats on a night when they outplayed their opponents.
“We struggled to defend, we threw it away, and we didn’t shoot it very well,” Lickliter said. “That’s pretty much a formula for what happened.”[email protected]
