Northwestern University Athletics
Skip Myslenski's First Impressions
11/13/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 13, 2009
* Credit the 'Cats' opening-game rout of Northern Illinois to their 1-3-1 zone, which the Huskies treated as some rare-and-mysterious creation. Really. When asked to solve it, they had no answers.
* This was especially true in the last 11:45 of the first half, that span when the 'Cats built a lead they would never relinquish. For over those long minutes, the Huskies managed just four field goals and nine points seasoned with a half-dozen turnovers. "I thought our zone really helped us...," 'Cat coach Bill Carmody later said. "Even when we didn't get steals, I thought they were a little off balance...It slowed them down. I think they were a little more hesitant."
* It must be noted here that the 'Cats and the Huskies were not the only teams on display Friday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena. That was true too of the trio of officials who worked this game, which was mottled by 54 personal fouls (33 on Northern, 21 on the 'Cats). The result: the 'Cats were in the one-and-one for 24:21; were in the double bonus for 18:55; attempted 48 free throws; and collected 34 of their 77 points at the line.
* Those freebies were nice, but did little to answer the question Carmody chewed on shortly after learning that high-scoring Kevin Coble would be sidelined for at least a month by a foot injury. That question was, not surprisingly, who would supply the points the forward provided? "I was sort of going back and forth between starting Ivan (Peljusic) and keeping Jeremy (Nash) coming off the bench because I like the way he comes in," he would say when asked if he saw anything in this game that would hint at the answer.
"But maybe Ivan can be the energy guy like Jeremy was last year. I think those two will give us a little bit. (Michael) Thompson also...It's hard to know. It's a different dynamic, so we'll see. We're sort of doing it on the fly. It (the injury to Coble) didn't happen three weeks ago. It happened three days ago. So we've sort of got to figure it out."
* John Shurna scored 11 and Thompson scored a dozen and Luka Mirkovic scored 15, but the revelation this night was Nash, who last season played the role of super sub and energy guy and defensive pest. He did, in fact, start against the Huskies and even though he did not shoot particularly well (4-of-10 overall and 2-of-7 on his threes), he attacked aggressively enough to get himself to the line. He there made 10 of his 12 free throw attempts to end with a team-leading 20 points, eight more than his previous game-high.
"I don't think it's so much my role changing," he would say when asked about his emergence as a scorer. "I think, like I said a lot last year, I've got to be more aggressive and all this week, the coaches kept telling me to assert myself on offense first, don't just sit back and expect it to be all defense. That's what I tried to do today."
* He's a senior now," Carmody would say of Nash. "I thought he had, I don't know if it was a breakout year last year, but for him it was. He was a little bit of a dilettante his first couple of years. He dabbled in it. But last year he started playing really hard and this spring, he really worked on his game."
"I don't think it's so much about being more serious," Nash would say when asked about his coach's observation. "I think the first two years, getting injured with my groin and then my back, I think that took a toll on me. I wanted to do more, but at the same time I didn't know what my role was. I just thought last year to come out with energy and then this year, with Kevin going down, I wanted to take the leadership role and pick my team up and let them know we've got to move on, no matter what. We're still a team and we're still trying to make the NCAA Tournament."
* Speaking of Coble, he held a briefing before this game to discuss the injury he suffered at last Tuesday's practice. "At this point," he reported, "surgery is a possibility. It really is going to depend on the follow up (examination) Monday with another specialist. We're going to go from there."
* His injury, by the way, is a mild Lisfranc, which is essentially a mid-foot fracture. "In all the time of me playing and being around the game, coach and I were talking about it today, we've never even heard of it. Obviously, people have had it...but it is unusual that with as much basketball as I've played, as much as coach has been around it, we've never seen it, never heard of it, really didn't know anything about it until Tuesday around three o'clock."
* If surgery is not required, he could be back in four-to-six weeks. But that, he said, "Would be rehabilitation time, not in six weeks be ready to play again. So it's a little of a gray area there."
*If surgery is required, it's four months of recovery before rehabilitation begins. In that case, he said, "I'd just come back next year."
* Finally, there is this possibility: he passes on surgery now, begins rehab, gets a month into it, realizes he isn't healing and decides to have surgery then. "There's a lot to factor in," he finally says. "It's not like you can drop me in and things are going to be great...
"These guys are going to develop their own chemistry during the non-conference season. You have to look at where were are. Is our record in a position that warrants me coming back and trying to make that final push or is it going to be better just to write this one off and come back strong next October?"
* But that's in the future. As for this night, said Carmody, "I thought it was a nice first game for us."
