Illinois continued its recent dominance over Northwestern Thursday, cruising to an 85-60 victory.
With the loss, the Wildcats (7-11, 0-7 Big Ten) have now dropped three straight games to the Fighting Illini (14-5, 4-4 Big Ten) including a 93-52 blowout at home last season.
NU’s Thursday loss followed a similar pattern to last year’s home matchup.
The ’Cats fell into an early hole, left their shooting prowess in the locker room and couldn’t withstand Illinois’ dominant post performance. NU finished the night shooting just 35.4% from the field, while the Illini shot 49.2%.
Despite the blowout loss, graduate student guard Kyla Jones delivered a strong performance, scoring 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting on a night when NU’s typical leading scorer — senior forward Caileigh Walsh — managed just four points.
The ’Cats didn’t make a three until the latter part of the third quarter and were outpaced on the glass 43-32. In nearly every aspect of the stat sheet, including free throw percentage and assists, NU came up short.
“Sometimes teams come after us really hard and you gotta respond,” coach Joe McKeown said postgame. “We didn’t respond ’til it was too late. I know we’re a much better team than that, so I’m really disappointed.”
Four of the ’Cats’ seven Big Ten losses this season have been by double digits, and this is the fourth time this year that NU has lost by at least 20. In their previous outing against Minnesota Sunday, the ’Cats dropped a 16-point fourth-quarter lead.
“We had probably the best game we played against Minnesota,” McKeown said. “I thought that would carry over tonight, but Illinois came out and played great and we didn’t answer the bell.”
Looking ahead to NU’s next game at Iowa on Tuesday, Jones said getting off to better starts will be a key priority. On Thursday, NU fell behind 27-9 in the first quarter, setting a difficult tone for the rest of the game.
“We can’t start the way we started today,” Jones said. “We need to start better, play harder from the tip, not just the third or fourth quarter.”
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