Northwestern University Athletics
Quick Hits: 'Cat Fight In Pullman
3/22/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 22, 2011
NUsports.com's Skip Myslenski breaks down what you need to know heading into Northwestern's third-round NIT contest at Washington State late Wednesday evening.
Quick hits ...
• School's out and many of his classmates are off doing, well, whatever it is that college students do at this time of the year. But no, says 'Cat point guard Michael Thompson, "I didn't have any spring break plans. In my mind I was always saying, 'I want to be playing over spring break.'"
• The 'Cats next play a third-round game of the NIT Wednesday night against Washington State in the Cougars' hometown of Pullman, which is one of those places that you can't get to from here. Fortunately, for them, the school popped for a charter. "Otherwise," says 'Cat coach Bill Carmody, "they were going to have us go to Denver, Minneapolis, this is the NIT, then you have to fly to Spokane and then whatever that bus ride is, an hour-and-a-half, something crazy like that. Now we're going to charter right into Pullman. So it makes a difference and the school's been good enough to pay for that. It's no small expense."
• The 'Cats earned a third-round game with their 18-point win over Boston College last Saturday, but did not know their opponent until Washington State defeated Oklahoma State Monday night. That meant, of course, they couldn't work on their Cougar stuff until Tuesday morning, but that doesn't mean they were idle. On Sunday morning Carmody fed a number of his players as they honed their shooting skills and, on Monday, they held a full practice aimed at not only sharpening their own offense. They also worked on those Xs and Os their two possible opponents had in common.
"They both play some 2-3 zone," Carmody says, giving some examples. "They both like to push the ball, so your transition defense is going to be really important. So we spent a little time having the second team fly up the court, maybe take some bad shots, but just get going. Just a few of the things they have in common."
• Any significant difficulties with the short turnaround? "No. No. Another day of preparation would be OK. But I don't think the travel should affect us because we're chartering. The school's doing a good thing."
• On Sunday, after shooting, many of the 'Cats hung around to support the Wildcat Women's Basketball team in their NIT game with Alabama. We congratulated Thompson on his team's impressive win over Boston College and he responded by saying, "Yeah. But we've got to get better."
"We have to continue to work hard, just continue to improve," he reiterated Tuesday morning, and those two comments reflect well enough that his team's mindset is still greedy.
"I think (we can improve)," Carmody said when Thompson's comments were related to him. "We played pretty well, but there were certainly some things we could have done better. We had nine, 10, 11 turnovers, something like that. We don't have to have those kinds of turnovers. That's one area. And we missed a lot of open shots. This is one of my best shooting teams. I've had some decent ones. But this is a really good shooting team, so we should be having one of those games when we're making not 38 (percent of their threes), but 55. You've got to have one of those games."
• Over his last eight games, Thompson has shot 45 percent overall, 47.1 percent on his threes, a perfect 33-of-33 from the line and averaged 21.6 points and 40.2 minutes. But this is no surprise. He has long been his team's ballast on big occasions. What has been a pleasant (and most-helpful) surprise for the 'Cats is the postseason reemergence of forward John Shurna, who had struggled to regain his form after severely twisting an ankle in late December and suffering a concussion in late January.
In their overtime loss to top-ranked Ohio State at the Big Ten tourney, he was 7-of-13 overall, 3-of-6 on his threes and finished with 25 points and five rebounds. He followed that by going 8-of-14 overall and 5-of-10 on his threes while scoring 25 in their victory over Milwaukee in an opening-round game of the NIT, and then went for 20 points and nine boards in their win over BC.
So Tuesday morning we tell Carmody, "He looks healthier, friskier."
"Yeah. Yeah," he replies. "He's got some life. He gets to smile a little bit. So I agree with that."
"I'm feeling a little better, so everything's going pretty well," Shurna himself will later say. "It's nice being healthy, knock on wood."
• This will tell you why a healthy (and frisky) Shurna is important to the 'Cats. In their dozen losses he has appeared in this season, he has averaged 12.5 ppg while shooting 38 percent overall and 32.7 percent on his three. But in their 19 wins in which he has played, he has averaged 19.6 ppg while shooting 55.4 percent overall and 50.5 percent on his threes.
• Speaking of health: Freshman guard JerShon Cobb, who has sat out the postseason with an injury, is healthy now and expected to play Wednesday.
• Shurna, by the way, was a teammate of a pair of Cougars on the U.S. team that won the gold medal at the Under-19 World Championships in the summer of 2009. One of them is 6-foot-6 guard Klay Thompson, a first-team All-PAC-10 selection whose 22.2 ppg average is eight best in the nation. The other is 6-foot-8 forward DeAngelo Casto, who is shooting 58.3 percent from the field, averaging 12.1 ppg and a team-leading 6.8 rpg. Shurna, who has kept in contact with Thompson, planned to text him sometime on Tuesday. And what would he say?
"'We're coming to Pullman.' I don't know. Probably a couple of inside jokes."
No trash talk?
"I'm not much of a trash talker."
• They closed out their regular season with a win over Minnesota, beat the Gophs again at the Big Ten tourney before falling to Ohio State in overtime and now, for the first time in school history, have grabbed off a pair of postseason victories. So we had to ask Carmody if his 'Cats are now play better than they have all year. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so," he said. "Again, it's on the road, so we'll see. What people are saying these days, any time a team loses, they say, 'Well, they didn't come to play.' When did that start? 'Well, Boston College, they didn't come to play.' What do you mean? They came to play. Maybe they missed a couple. It's not that they went, 'Oh, no. Not again.' That's what everyone says now. It's not true. I think we're ready. We're playing at a pretty nice level here, but it's an away court. That's the main thing. Now how are you going to behave when it's a little nutty? BC, they didn't have much of a crowd. Last night (watching Washington State top Oklahoma State), it seemed pretty rowdy to me."
• And finally, Thompson, on the importance of a Wednesday night win, which gives the victor a berth in the NIT Final Four at Madison Square Garden: "That would mean a lot. We were able to go to Madison Square Garden in December for a little tournament (the Holiday Festival). We weren't able to win the tournament. We lost in the championship game (to St. John's). So we've got some unfinished business at Madison Square Garden."
