Northwestern University Athletics
Northwestern
Minnesota
Northwestern Has No Answer For No. 6 Minnesota
1/8/2004 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan 8, 2004
EVANSTON, Ill. -
Northwestern discovered why Big Ten opponent Minnesota is No. 6 on Thursday night. The Gopher's Lindsay Whalen had 21 points and six assists and Janel McCarville scored 15 to help Minnesota stay undefeated with a 72-40 win over the Wildcats.
Northwestern was playing without four key members of its squad due to illness or injury, forcing its younger players to step up and play more time than they had in the previous 12 games. Head coach June Olkowski knew what they would be up against.
"They are the number six team in the country because they are very good," said Olkowski. "It is hard when you are missing intricate parts of your offense. The squad that we had on the floor was a good squad, but they were playing a lot of minutes that they would not normally play."
Minnesota (13-0, 2-0 Big Ten) is off to its best start in school history. The Golden Gophers won 12 straight to open last season.
Minnesota hit its first nine shots of the game and took a 25-2 lead on 3-pointers by Shannon Schonrock and Whalen. The Golden Gophers' first miss at 14:39 drew derisive applause from the crowd, who then saw a 5-0 run by the home team.
Alex Mueller's 3 for Northwestern made it 25-7, but Minnesota went on another big run to increase its lead to 29 midway through the first half. McCarville stole the ball on consecutive possessions and scored on easy layups for four of her nine points during the 13-2 spurt.
The Gophers led 44-16 at halftime, shooting 69 percent in the opening half. Northwestern turned the ball over on five of its first eight possessions of the game.
"We talked about the Providence-Texas game," said Olkowski. "We always think that we can come back but we have to execute the game plan and we have to make shots. I thought we played better in the second half. We looked a bit shell-shocked in the first four minutes, and in the second half we could never really get anything going."
Whalen's breakaway layup capped a 13-2 run for Minnesota to open the second half for a 57-18 lead.
A. J. Glasauer and senior co-captain Michelle Zylstra had 11 points each to lead Northwestern. Freshman Breanne Smilie played a season-high 34 minutes and captured three boards and five assists.
"I thought Smilie played well," said Olkowski. "She played hard, talked, communicated and ran our offense. We put Michelle at a position that she has not really played too much. She's more of an outside player, but she did her job inside."
Next up for the Wildcats is Ohio State on Sunday at Welsh-Ryan Arena. Game time is set for 2 p.m. CST.
(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
