After four straight campaigns finishing at or above .500 in conference play, Northwestern sputtered to a 2-16 finish in the Big Ten last year. With the 2023-24 season under a month away, coach Joe McKeown, senior forward Paige Mott and junior forward Caileigh Walsh fielded questions at Big Ten Media Day on Monday as the team looks to rebound from last year’s struggles.
Entering his 16th season at the helm of the Wildcats, McKeown said his team is looking to meet the program’s lofty expectations once again.
“We’re used to winning at a high level,” McKeown said. “Last year was a little tough. Our approach now is to just put our head down and go to work. … I think you’ll see the Wildcats right back to where we were.”
Here are three takeaways from NU’s round of interviews in Minneapolis:
Takeaways
1. McKeown hopes tough nonconference schedule pays dividends
The ‘Cats opened last season with matchups against a pair of top-20 squads (Oregon and Notre Dame) in two of their first three games. Although both games ended in blowout losses, NU and McKeown will once again face some high-quality opponents in nonconference play.
The ‘Cats will travel to South Bend, Indiana, on Nov. 15 to face coach Niele Ivey’s Notre Dame squad, which is ranked No. 11 in The Athletic’s preseason rankings. A multi-team event in Las Vegas will see NU matchup with Florida State, another projected top-20 outfit and could even see McKeown’s bunch face forward Cameron Brink and Stanford.
“We carved out a brutal schedule, which I wanted to challenge our team,” McKeown said. “Hopefully by the time Big Ten hits, we’ll be ready.”
2. McKeown leaning on transfer to shore up shooting struggles
It’s no secret that NU struggled from beyond the arc last season, shooting a Big Ten-worst 26.7% from 3-point range. Among the team’s returning players, sophomore guard Caroline Lau owns the highest 3-point shooting percentage, having knocked down 31.3% of her attempts.
The solution to those shooting woes, McKeown hopes, lies in Boston University transfer Maggie Pina.
“Maggie Pina is an amazing story, actually a kid from Philly who has scored 990-some points in her career at Boston U,” McKeown said. “One of the great shooters and we couldn’t shoot last year.”
Pina, who averaged 9.4 points per game as a senior for the Terriers, canned 37.5% of her 3-pointers. A career 34.4% shooter from deep, Pina improved her 3-point shooting mark by nearly eight percentage points from her junior to senior year.
In her first game in Spain, the lift her shooting could provide was immediately clear. The graduate student guard knocked down all six of her shots, including five 3s, McKeown said.
“She ain’t going to play defense, but she’s going to make shots,” McKeown said. “I can guarantee you that.”
3. Summer Spain trip lays foundation for team culture
McKeown might have confused Flamenco, the dance form based in southern Spain, for the pink birds native to Florida, but that did not deter him from discussing his favorite off-court memory from the team’s summer overseas trip.
“It was like watching a Broadway show,” McKeown said. “The drama and the emotion, it was incredible. … And then the three (Flamenco dancers) were such incredible athletes. It was about 110 degrees in there, I tried to get two of them to come be power forwards.”
On the court, the ‘Cats swept all three of their games, notching wins over Madrid Select, Nou Basquet Paterna and Catalonia Elite.
Both Mott and Walsh said improving the team’s culture was a big focus over the summer, with the trip across the pond serving as a key building block.
“When you’re losing, it’s really hard to stay together and keep the energy high,” Mott said. “But we worked a lot on it. We went to Spain, we bonded a lot and we’re just taking it one day at a time.”
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @CervantesPAlex
Related Stories:
— Women’s Basketball: Northwestern shoots for bounceback campaign
