Northwestern University Athletics
The Morning After...Looking Back on the Michigan Win
1/19/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 19, 2011
NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski sat down with Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody to take a morning-after look back on the Wildcats' 74-60 Big Ten win over Michigan Tuesday night.
• Here is a point that should be remembered when considering the 'Cats Tuesday night win over Michigan. It was expected. That reality is not merely a measure of the embattled Wolverines, who have just one Big Ten win. It is also a measure of the 'Cats current status, which belies their own embattled past. "Yeah. I think you're right. People expect us to win and it's great," Bill Carmody, their coach, will say Wednesday morning.
"Michigan is a pretty storied program. But they're a young team and you just wonder, at their place, if they continue to make those threes like they started last night, then it's a different team. I was thinking about Georgia Tech. We came out (in their game in November), we were making shots, doing all those things (on their way to a 20-point win). Then, Saturday, they blew out (North) Carolina (by 20). And think of Michigan. They took Kansas into overtime (before losing). So you think, 'What is this?' It's what coaches always talk about. Consistency. You know you're going to get 12 points and five rebounds from this guy, this guy, this guy. But it's the streaky guys who drive you nuts."
• The streakiest 'Cat of them all recently has surely been forward John Shurna, who has been hobbled by a damaged left ankle. He not only missed all four of his three-point attempts and went two-of-10 from the field and scored a mere six points in their overtime loss at Michigan State last Saturday. He, Carmody allowed on Wednesday, has also been performing poorly at practice, where he has been shut down by the 'Cat second team. It's a mental thing with the ankle. That is what the TV analyst Shon Morris said Carmody had told him about Shurna's condition.
"I heard Shon say that. I don't know if I said that. I might have. But it could be," Carmody said Wednesday when asked about that observation. "Maybe Michigan State just played him really well. I don't know. But he hadn't been rebounding at all the last three games. He wasn't jumping off his left foot. He was driving to pass and not to score. I told him just the other day that it (the ankle) is not going to be perfect (for the rest of the season). Now he's got to find a way to play well when it's not perfect. He's never had a stamina problem, that kid. But now he seems to have one a little bit. I noticed some anxiousness there."
With that word anxiousness, we ask, is he implying that Shurna has been feeling he had to carry the team and that he has been wearied by this weight he has thrown onto his shoulders.
"Yeah. I think Drew's quick start sort of ignited the whole team a little bit. And with John, he didn't have to think I've got to score, I've got to do this, that, for the team to win. It was, 'OK, I'll just do my normal stuff.' It wasn't, 'I've got to do it.' There wasn't that tension."
• Drew is the sophomore forward Drew Crawford, who opened the 'Cat scoring against Michigan with a pair of three-pointers and accounted for eight of their first 10 points. That is the start Carmody was referring to and now, in its wake, Shurna himself would hit a pair of three-pointers and go on to finish with a game-high 24 while going eight-of-14 overall and four-of-seven on his threes. He was, on this night, his old self and duly lauded for that. But the point here is to also throw a deserved valentine to Crawford, who would not score again in the game's final 36 minutes. That did not matter here. He had already completed a crucial job by merely removing some weight from Shurna's shoulders.
• Carmody, from the start of the season, has said that centers Luka Mirkovic and Davide Curletti do not have to be dominant for his team to succeed. But, and it's a big but, they must contribute some on the offensive end and not get battered and bloodied on the boards. The truth of that adage was proven in this win, which saw the pair combine for 20 points and 13 rebounds. "Our rebounds, combined, were very good, and they finished off some too (when they got passes underneath)," Carmody would say of them. "That's very important to us. You can see that's important to us. If you're just doing that ring-around-the-rosey for 30 minutes, that's not going to work."
On Mirkovic he would also add: "You want more out of him. You want him to finish off some more of these. But he's doing enough, he's doing enough right now. I actually think he's in a pretty good place."
• Were there any surprises when he watched the tape of this win? "Not that much," he said. "Normally, when you think you played well, you watch the tape and you didn't play as well. And when you think you played poorly, you weren't that bad. But I enjoyed watching this tape because there were different possessions where I thought the ball was moving around beautifully and it was, 'Splash.' Then you feel like, 'Wow. That's really something.' I felt there were three or four possessions like that that I really liked."
• Thursday brings a nonconference game against SIU Edwardsville and then, on Sunday morning, comes a visit from always-gnarly Wisconsin. So, we wonder, does Carmody like where his team is at heading into those affairs. "Yeah. Yeah," he says. "We had a tough start, but against good teams (Illinois, Purdue, Michigan State twice). But then, well, basically we've done what we're supposed to do. We handled Indiana here. We went on the road and beat Iowa. All right. We could have won at Michigan State. We could have won that game. We didn't play great, but we played well enough to win. But we didn't. Then last night we got out and did what we did. Now. We're beating the teams we're supposed to beat. Now we have to beat someone at the top."
What he just said, we tell him, is another measure of his team's status, that it can not play great and still come within a field goal of beating Michigan State.
"I told our guys before the (Michigan) game, 'We're doing OK here, fellas,' he says back. "We weren't really that happy (losing to Michigan State). Not just because we lost. But because we felt we could have played better and we were still there. So, OK. You should be disappointed, but you shouldn't be down."
You should, we say, think you're pretty good if you can take Michigan State into overtime while not playing great.
"Yeah, yeah," Bill Carmody finally says. "And I think they get that. They understand that."
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