After tumbling to a 0-7 start to conference play in mid-January, Northwestern appeared deflated and lost. It was searching for answers.
The Wildcats had just been blown out 77-58 by then-No. 8 Nebraska. Despite stringing together an optimistic first half and trailing by just five points at the break, they vanished, much like they have numerous times this season.
The defeat was expected against an undefeated team, but, coupled with a string of late failures in close losses, spirits seemed to reach new lows for NU.
After the game, senior forward Nick Martinelli sat at the podium, hunched over, sniffling as he took questions about mental toughness. His first answer was blunt — just 14 words.
The work needed to start in practice, he said.
The ’Cats didn’t appear gritty enough to compete for 40 minutes, which coach Chris Collins attributed to a lack of toughness, a quality that NU became admired for in recent years. At the time, the team had given up 75 or more points in every conference contest.
But returning from a two-game West Coast swing against USC and UCLA, splitting the contests, it appears the ’Cats have found new resolve.
On the trip, NU started three freshmen — guard Jake West and forwards Tre Singleton and Tyler Kropp — as they defeated a USC team that started then-25-year-old guard Chad Baker-Mazara. Against UCLA, the team couldn’t pull away with a victory, but showed perseverance as it cut a 16-point deficit to two points late in the game.
Plus, it held USC and UCLA to 68 and 71 points, respectively.
“We played with a good sense of purpose,” Collins said. “Guys were fighting, competing and we’re going to need more of that as we head into these last 11 games of the conference (schedule).”
Early in the season, the ’Cats set out trying to play a different style of basketball than they’d grown accustomed to in recent years. Collins was gearing up to run deeper rotations, and this team was supposed to push the pace.
But somewhere in between, with a team featuring eight new players, NU seemed to have lost the defensive, effort-based identity.
Collins said the team discussed its ideals before heading to California, describing how they wanted a high-effort atmosphere in the locker room. Spending a week together on the road might have also brought the group together, he added.
Junior guard Jordan Clayton felt that shift, and told The Daily that the team’s “vibe” changed in Los Angeles.
“Our style of play, like how we’re competing, it’s got a lot better,” Clayton said. “I think that’ll propel us to get some wins.”
Collins recalled the ’Cats 2015 team — for which now-assistant coach Bryant McIntosh was a freshman — that finished 15-17 as a model for the current squad. That group always practiced hard and held high spirits, he said.
Despite starting 1-10 in conference play, they finished the regular season with a 5-2 record. The next season, they won 20 games. And the following year, they notched 24 victories.
“We won five of our last seven as they settled in and found a way to win a couple, and hopefully something similar (will happen for) this group.”
Martinelli credited at least some of the uptick in effort to NU’s young talents, who started with heightened hunger against USC.
Kropp and West had 11 points, while Green added nine points. But it was the little plays, like hustling on a fastbreak to force a missed layup or fighting to grab a rebound, that stood out.
For that young core, Collins appears committed to cultivating them in a practice environment that admires the program’s ideals. In an era of constant roster shifts via the transfer portal, he noted how much more year-to-year, and therefore trickier, culture-building has become. But he has stuck with it, trying to build around a growing group of players.
“I would like to consider that our program can still kind of do things by keeping kids within, developing from within and then adding around that core going forward,” Collins said. “That’s always been a really good model for us.”
As the ’Cats gear up for a two-game home stand starting Thursday, against Penn State and Washington — both teams in the bottom half of the conference standings — they will look to build on their newfound morale.
Martinelli said NU felt a weight lifted off their shoulders with the win against USC, but he doesn’t anticipate its urgency to lessen.
“Talk is definitely cheap,” Martinelli said. “We are going to see how hard we play in this next game against Penn State because they play hard as heck.”
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