Northwestern University Athletics
The Morning After... A Tough Loss
2/25/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 25, 2011
NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski takes a look back at Northwestern's 66-52 home loss to Penn State Thursday evening.
'Cat coach Bill Carmody walked into the interview room, plopped down onto a chair and sniffed. "Smell something smoking?" he said to the faces in front of him.
Then, after a pause that no one filled with an answer, he added: "It wasn't us."
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His 'Cats collapsed into a 16-point hole early on Thursday night in their game with Penn State and the reason for that was obvious. They made just one of their first nine shots and the Nittany Lions made eight of their first nine. But less than seven minutes later they were back to within three and this is when the string of their greatest failures began. For here, with a chance to tie, point Michael Thompson missed a jumper, rebounded and fed forward John Shurna, who himself missed a three.
This was but the first of 11 opportunities they had to knot up the Nittany Lions and put an extra measure of pressure on them. But, in order: guard JerShon Cobb missed a jumper; Thompson missed a three; Thompson missed a layup; swingman Drew Crawford made a layup that brought them to within one, which the Nittany Lions immediately stretched back to three with a basket of their own; Thompson missed an 18-footer from the right wing; Thompson missed a layup; Cobb missed a three; Crawford missed a 15-footer; guard Alex Marcotullio missed a three from the right wing; and Crawford missed a three.
That, when you add it up, is one-of-12 shooting (or 8.3 percent) at crucial junctures and that, in turn, is fatal. "If you score," Carmody would explain after his team fell by 14, "there's pressure on the other team. When they know you're not making shots, they're not tight when they're on offense. There's just so many times you can make stops. . . We couldn't get over the hump so they would feel uptight. A lot of pretty good looks, I thought. Looked like we had some pretty good looks from some of our good shooters. But Mike was the only guy who was really making them tonight."
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Thompson, valiant as always, carried the 'Cats as far as he could and went nine-of-16 overall and four-of-six on his threes while finishing with 22. Not insignificantly, that was a preposterous 42.3 percent of his team's total. But Shurna, the other alpha scorer in the 'Cat quiver, went two-of-10 overall and one-of-six on his threes while finishing with only 10. Not insignificantly, his only second-half field goal was an offensive rebound and his last point of the game (a free throw) came at 7:14.
"He shot the heck out of the ball yesterday in practice and today at shoot-around. I just think he missed," Carmody later said when asked if Shurna might still be suffering some after effects from the concussion he incurred against Minnesota one month ago.
"It was one of those games where his shot wasn't falling for him," echoed Thompson.
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The beginning for the 'Cats was as unsavory as their ultimate defeat. They were then in their familiar match-up zone, but instead of quickly passing Nittany Lions along, they held their zone longer than usual. "They sort of tore (that defense) apart," Carmody would say. That forced him to switch to a 1-3-1 zone, which was effective for long stretches and the ladder that got the 'Cats out of their hole. "But I've said all along. It's not a defense you can play, you shouldn't play it for 30 minutes," Carmody would say after his team had done just that.
He doesn't like to play it so long since it demands constant exertion from his players, which makes the transformation to an offensive threat that much harder. Not only that. The Nittany Lions themselves were aggressive on defense and as bothersome to the 'Cat shooters as an annoying mother-in-law is to family peace. "I thought our defense was pretty good," Ed DeChellis, their coach, later said. "I thought we guarded, I thought we pushed out on shooters, I thought we made it, we tried to make it as tough as possible for them to score and then rebound the basketball."
But conventional wisdom says that a defense that pushes out against the 'Cats is susceptible to their back-door cuts.
"We tried to stay between them and the basket as much as we could," said DeChellis. "We don't gap it for this game. We try to stay between them and the basket. We try to give ball pressure, we really try to pressure the basketball the best we can, and get our hands up to discourage the passes. We try to play their passing hand as much as we can. Some days it works and some days it doesn't. Tonight, it worked."
Mix those above reasons together and you know why the 'Cats shot 38.5 percent overall (20-of-52) and just 25 percent (six-of-24) on their threes. Entering the game, they had been shooting 46 percent overall and 38.4 percent on their threes.
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Two other points should be noted here as well. The 'Cats had zero, that is zero, fast break points against the Nittany Lions. And, said Carmody, "There's no inside presence (on his team), so I just don't want to say it's missing shots (that led to the loss). They probably had shots too (that they missed). But that's what we do because our production inside has not been good."
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"It's a tough loss for us," Carmody said.
"It's a tough loss for us," Thompson echoed minutes later.
It was a tough loss and nothing else has to be said.
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