Northwestern flirted with disaster on Wednesday night, eking out a 77-71 win at Texas-Pan American.
Beating the Broncs, who went 6-27 last season, was never going to be considered a statement win for the Wildcats. But a loss would have spoken volumes about the competency of a program hunting for its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance and hoping to reverse last season’s road-game woes.
NU escaped with the win but delivered a performance marked more by survival than skill as it extended its perfect series record against Texas-Pan American to 6-0.
In the opening minutes, NU looked like it might put together the sort of assertive performance it mustered in the second half of its 98-77 win at Northern Illinois on Friday night.
Freshman guard JerShon Cobb, starting in his first regular season matchup after being sidelined with a hip flexor injury against the Huskies, gave NU its first points of the game with a pair of free throws. From there, it was all about sophomore forward Drew Crawford, who sunk back-to-back shots from the top of the key and a finessed jumper, finishing with 13 points in the first half and a game-high 22 points.
But then, as it would do until the final buzzer, Texas-Pan American began to answer back, although never definitively enough to steal the win.
NU snuck away with a six-point lead at half, up 35-29. The Cats were in a similar position last Friday against Northern Illinois at the break but behind sophomore John Shurna’s 22-point second half run, it managed to pull away and erase its first half shooting troubles.
The Cats led by as many as 11 points in the second half and was considerably more dangerous once it finally switched to its signature 1-3-1 zone.
With a little more than a minute left to play, the Broncs crept back to make it 74-71. Senior point guard Michael Thompson put away an off-balance jumper to help seal the win and finished the night with 17 points.
The game harkened back to the Cats’ 53-44 win against the Broncs last season at home where NU struggled to put together an assertive lead. With five minutes left in that matchup the Broncs were only two points behind and looked poised to stage a comeback, when Shurna answered back with a three-pointer to put the game out of reach.
This season’s win marks the end of NU’s back-to-back road games as it returns home on Friday night to host Arkansas Pine-Bluff. The last time the Cats opened a season with consecutive games was in their 1974-75 campaign when they faced No. 16 Kentucky and No. 13 Notre Dame on the road.
The Cats will not play on the road again until they head to New York to square off in the Madison Square Garden Holiday Festival in late December.
