Men’s Basketball

Northwestern produced one of its worst offensive performances in years in a 66-46 loss at Indiana on Sunday afternoon.

Junior forward Vic Law and sophomore guard Isiah Brown led the Wildcats (11-8, 2-4 Big Ten) with 9 points each, while junior center Dererk Pardon added 8 point and eight rebounds. Robert Johnson paced the Hoosiers (11-7, 4-2) with 17 points.

The first half was a thorough demonstration of hideous basketball, as the two teams combined for just seven points through the first six minutes and ultimately made just 15-of-55 shots combined.

Things seemed in danger of spiraling out of control early on for NU, which fell down 13-3 after a brutal offensive drought and then saw senior guard Bryant McIntosh suffer another injury. But McIntosh returned, Law produced a spark towards the end of the half and the Cats rallied to trail just 24-19 at halftime.

After the break, however, the hosts found their offensive rhythm while the visitors did not. Indiana reversed its shooting luck by draining 14-of-23 shots in the second half, including a 21-2 run that broke the game open and extended the lead to double digits for good.

The Cats’ 46 total points — on 27 percent shooting — was the fourth-fewest of the Chris Collins coaching era.

Takeaways

1. Scottie Lindsey isn’t back to form. It’s hard to believe that Lindsey’s ghastly stat line in Bloomington — 1-for-15 from the field — isn’t the senior guard’s outright worst outing of the season, but his campaign has been littered with these kind of days: 1-for-12 against Oklahoma and 0-for-8 against Georgia Tech. Lindsey seemed to have rediscovered his ‘A’-game after a relatively efficient 22-point game vs. Minnesota on Wednesday, but that certainly didn’t repeat itself Sunday.

2. Collins has little faith in his bench. NU didn’t get a single point from its bench until the last four minutes, when the game was already well out of hand. When Pardon committed his third foul early in the second half, sophomore backup Barrett Benson’s time on the court coincided with the game’s devolvement into a rout, and that was emblematic of the entire bench’s performance all afternoon long.

3. Northwestern is not going to the NCAA Tournament. Last time the Cats lost, we wrote that their NCAA Tournament chances were on life support. Despite the win in between, Sunday’s loss — especially in such embarrassing fashion — just about dooms them. NU not only has zero wins over likely tournament teams this season but is sitting way down the Big Ten standings with a very difficult schedule in the coming weeks. Expectations for this team need to drop dramatically the rest of the way.

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