With 19 seconds left in the game, senior guard Brooks Barnhizer picked up his sixth steal of the night. Breaking down the court quickly, Barnhizer went up and stuffed the goal with the basketball, swinging on the rim and putting an exclamation mark on a big Northwestern win.
He fell flat on his face as blood began gushing from the bridge of his nose, but coach Chris Collins said Barnhizer “assured me he was going to be okay” in the postgame presser.
Barnhizer’s bloodied nose put the finishing touches on a commanding 79-70 victory as the Wildcats (12-7, 3-5 Big Ten) defeated the Hoosiers (14-6, 5-4 Big Ten) for the fifth straight contest.
The win marks NU’s longest win streak over the Hoosiers since the ’Cats defeated Indiana five times between 1913-1915.
“Just really proud of the win tonight,” Collins said. “It was kind of a weird game, honestly.”
The first half of the contest contained just about everything a basketball fan could ask for: an errant tip-off that went straight out of bounds, 11 straight points from one player and a nine-and-a-half-minute stretch with no field goals from the ’Cats, to name a few.
Junior forward Nick Martinelli opened the scoring for NU with a 3-pointer. The teams began trading punches, as the ’Cats held a two-point lead with over 12 minutes to play in the first half.
Everything changed when graduate student guard Ty Berry found his rhythm. Following a 3-pointer by Indiana forward Luke Goode, Berry responded with a triple of his own to extend the NU lead to five.
Hoosier guard Trey Galloway canceled out Berry’s triple on the following possession, but the graduate student did not go away easily.
A considerable distance from the three-point line, Berry pulled up and buried his shot. He continued his hot play, hitting a jumper and another three-pointer to extend the ’Cats’ lead to 10 with 9:35 remaining in the first half.
Coming off the bench in his third straight game, the Newton, Kansas, native went on to score a team-high 23 points off a 7-of-10 night from beyond the arc.
“I’ve always loved Ty. I love his energy,” Collins said. “He fills my bucket a lot with that.”
Down double digits for the first time in the game, Indiana found some of Berry’s energy.
A string of misses and turnovers from the ’Cats stopped them dead in their tracks as the momentum shifted firmly in the visitors’ favor. Indiana worked the score back to an even 25 when Galloway hit a jumper to take the lead.
Indiana also locked down on defense. The only two NU points in the rest of the half came from the charity stripe.
Suddenly, Collins’s squad found itself down 31-25 at halftime.
Collins was not a fan of the competitive spirit, or lack thereof, the ’Cats showed before the intermission.
“I said, ‘Guys, it’s not panic time, but it’s extreme sense of urgency time,’” Collins said of the message at halftime.
The ’Cats took that message to heart, going on an 8-0 run before the under-16-minute timeout that saw NU take a 39-37 lead.
The Hoosiers kept nagging at NU’s side, though.
With just over 10 minutes left in the game, Goode nailed a corner three, giving Indiana a 50-49 lead. But the ’Cats never let down their guard.
Following a steal by graduate student center Matthew Nicholson, Berry sank yet another trey, this time from the corner, to give NU a lead it would not relinquish.
From then on, NU’s shots just kept falling.
With just over six minutes remaining, graduate student guard Jalen Leach knocked down a triple from the top of the arc and repeated the feat on the subsequent possession to give the ’Cats a 62-52 lead and force an Indiana timeout. NU players on the bench traveled as far as half-court to celebrate the make.
Leach finished the contest with 15 points and seven assists after not scoring a single point in the first half.
Barnhizer also got in on the fun, hitting his only triple of the game with just over four minutes remaining.
Collins said that Berry’s success from the field rubbed off on his teammates.
“When everybody’s missing, that can be contagious at times,” Collins said. “When the ball is going in like that, I think it can become contagious. I think Ty hitting those shots, that unleashed Jalen.”
The Hoosiers tried to work their way back into the contest, cutting the deficit to as low as four, but the ’Cats held on.
With 12 games remaining in the season, every contest becomes more important for making a tournament push, but Collins has belief in his squad.
“I’m a big believer in the basketball gods,” Collins said. “When guys really immerse themselves in the game and they compete and they’re all about winning and their team, then the ball just magically starts going in.”
NU will return to the hardwood on Sunday against No. 17 Illinois in Champaign.
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