Northwestern University Athletics
Playing On...Season Starts Anew for Wildcats Wednesday
3/15/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 15, 2011
To its delight and perhaps relief, the Northwestern men's basketball team received a bid to the National Invitation Tournament on Sunday, allowing the Wildcats' season to continue. NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski got reaction leading up to Wednesday night's first-round home game against Milwaukee.
This was Sunday night and the NIT Selection Show was about to begin and still the call had not come. That is the way it traditionally happens. A team is informed it is part of that field well before it is made public. But that call had not come and this is why 'Cat swingman Drew Crawford was fretting in the room he shares with guard Alex Marcotullio, and 'Cat coach Bill Carmody was stewing himself, and 'Cat point Michael Thompson was trying to quell his hyperactive mind as he drove toward the school.
"I was worried. I was worried. Yeah," Crawford remembered on Tuesday morning. "I was sitting there kind of nervous, thinking, 'That couldn't have been our last game. It couldn't have been.' I was anticipating a text and I got a little worried when it took awhile."
"If you don't hear, well, I started to watch the thing (show) and I said, 'What am I watching this for?'" remembered Carmody. "I wasn't that happy. I had thought we'd be in. But then I didn't think we were in."
"They had called and asked me to be in public relations office to talk to some media after the announcement," remembered Thompson. "I was really nervous. I kept texting our director of operations, Joe Kennedy, asking if he'd heard anything. Usually you hear before the show comes on and he kept saying no, so I was getting really nervous. So while I was on my way up here, there were some really crazy thoughts going through my head. I'm like, 'If we don't make it, I don't know that I want to talk to anyone.'"
But then came the show and the texts started to fly and the 'Cats learned they, in fact, were in the field and hosting Milwaukee on Wednesday night. "We got a home game," Crawford yelled to Marcotullio.
"I was real excited getting to play at home again," he said Tuesday.
"I was very happy," Thompson said. "I was over there (in the public relations offices) and saw our name come up and we got a home game, my eyes just lit up. I was excited to be able to play in Evanston again."
Carmody, too, was excited. But the good news came so late he canceled the practice he had scheduled for that Sunday evening.
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"I look at it as a rebirth. I think a lot of our guys are," Crawford says of Wednesday's game. "We struggled a little bit during the season. But now we get the chance to play in the post-season. It's not the NCAA Tournament. But it's still a rebirth and the opportunity for another life."
"It's another post-season game," says Thompson. "Obviously, it's not the NCAA Tournament. But it's another opportunity for us to win a championship, for us to still be able to play. We understand that it's one-and-done. Now we just want to go out here and continue to play."
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The NCAA tourney was the 'Cats avowed goal throughout this season, but injuries and inconsistency and their inability to both close out some games strongly (most notably, their two with Michigan State) and start all games in gear (which did not happen at Illinois or against Wisconsin at home) combined to steal that trophy from them. "At this point we don't have time to look back. We have to focus on the NIT," Thompson will say when this is pointed out to him. "But after the season I'm sure there's going to come a time when everybody on the team, as well as the coaching staff, are going to think about a couple games we let slip away that could have made a difference in us getting to the NCAA Tournament."
But still, even now, they can think of their two performances against top-ranked Ohio State and here they can find strength. "It hurts a little bit, actually, thinking back," Crawford says of those games. "The No. 1 team in the nation, we had a chance at them twice and weren't able to get it done. It hurts a little bit thinking back on that. When you grow up you want to be able to tell the story, 'We beat the No. 1 team in the nation.' It's tough that we weren't able to do that. But it's positive just showing that we can play with any team in the nation. We took the No. 1 team in the nation twice to a great game. It just shows we can play with anybody."
"I definitely think our confidence level is a lot higher (than it was before their trip to last week's Big Ten tourney)," says Thompson. "Once again we battled the No. 1 team in the country. Obviously, that's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to win. But we took them into overtime and we felt, a couple plays, a couple mistakes that we made, that was the difference in the game. Now we're not playing teams like Ohio State anymore. Obviously, we're still playing good teams. But our confidence level is very high."
"Maybe he feels a little bit better thinking, 'I get to play some more.' It's like a boost right away," Carmody says of Thompson's assertion. "But I thought we were ready to go last week going into the tournament."
And how does he feel those performances against the Buckeyes have affected his team?
"Getting back to the confidence level and feeling good about yourself, I think we think we're pretty good. That's good," he says. "Certainly it's a loss. But it's the kind of loss that you say, 'OK, we can hang with a lot of people.'"
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Freshman guard JerShon Cobb is not expected to play on Wednesday, but senior forward Mike Capocci should be back from the freak injury (concussion, stitches in the head) that kept him out of the tourney. Has he ever figured out what happened? "Not exactly," he says. "But I believe it was just from standing up too quickly and having a delayed blood flow to my brain."
He was studying at his desk, he goes on, and got up and "Ten, 12 seconds later, I was on the ground waking up. I don't really know how long I was out for. I don't know how I got to the ground either."
Did he hit head on the desk?
"I tried to go back and figure that out. But my analysis provided inconclusive results. So I'm not really sure."
Pretty freaky, uh?
"It was a scary experience. Hopefully, it won't happen again."
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Milwaukee is coached by former Wisconsin assistant Rob Jeter and so we wondered if its style is similar to that used by Badger coach Bo Ryan. "Some flex offense a little bit, high ball screens," said Carmody. "There's not too many secrets. Most of the stuff we've seen before. It doesn't mean you can handle it. But you've seen a lot of things before. Mostly now it's about players, individual guys. They shoot the ball very well. They make about eight threes a game. And then they have a really good inside guy. Not unlike Ohio State, where they ring around (Jared) Sullinger. Here they ring around this guy (Anthony) Hill."
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And this final note: Twelve of the 'Cats 13 losses this season were to teams that are in the NCAA tourney. The exception came at Minnesota, which was ranked No. 16 at the time.
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