Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: A Shot In the Arm
12/8/2013 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 8, 2013
NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski takes a look back at a much-needed victory for the Northwestern men's basketball team over Western Michigan on Saturday.
It was not just the three consecutive losses, which were bad enough. It was also the portrait his `Cats presented last Wednesday night as they meekly succumbed to North Carolina State. This passiveness, their passiveness, not only flew in the face of his deepest self, where a competitive fire rages always. It also ignored one of his prime directives, which states his team should be the grittiest on the floor on any given night. In Raleigh it had surely not been that and so, that very evening, he knew that changes must be made. "I didn't know what they were going to be," Chris Collins would say early Saturday night.
"Really. The only thing I knew after NC State, I felt Drew (Crawford) was fighting alone. What I challenged the team the last couple of days, they need to fight like Drew fights. He's a senior. He has a sense of urgency. He doesn't get to do this again. For him, it's not about the long-term future of our program and we all owe it to him to fight every day to try to win each and every game. That's what I'm going to do for him. And I challenged the guys. I said, `Look. We've got two days of practice. The only thing I know is Drew's going to start.'"
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At their scout meeting on Friday, before they went over the match-ups for their Saturday game with Western Michigan, Collins revealed the changes he had decided to make. James Montgomery III would start in place of Dave Sobolewski at point and Nikola Cerina would open at center instead of Alex Olah. "It's not about being down on anybody. But when things aren't working, you just can't sit there and watch it continue to not work. You've got to try and find solutions," he explained after those switches helped catalyze the `Cats to an easy win over the Broncos.
"We had come off three straight games where we'd lost by double figures, and our last game was the game I felt we fought the least in. We were over-powered and we didn't fight back and...I felt we needed some energy in the lineup. The one guy who really hadn't had a chance yet this year to show what he could do was James. My instincts told me to give him a chance. I wanted him to guard the point guard and I wanted him to set the tone with his defense."
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On Saturday, then, the `Cats opening lineup was comprised of the 6-foot-9 Cerina and their four best athletes: the 6-foot-4 Montgomery, the 6-foot-5 Crawford, the 6-foot-5 JerShon Cobb and the 6-foot-6 Sanjay Lumpkin. Immediately, they were electric. First there was Crawford, who hit a baby jumper down low, and then there was Montgomery grabbing a long rebound and kicking out quickly to Cobb and Cobb feeding Lumpkin for a layup. Now Cerina joined the fray, pulling down a rebound and igniting a fast break that ended with a Cobb layup, and like that the `Cats were up 6-0 with less than three minutes gone.
The Broncos would not score their first field goal until another minute had passed, and now the tone of this entire evening had been established. Consider, for one example, this. Western would end the first half with just 12 points and only four of them came out of their set offense. (Four others came on free throws and the final four came on run outs.) Or consider this. On the night the Broncos shot just 24.4 percent overall (10-of-41), just 6.7 percent on their threes (1-of-15) and managed just 35 points. "If you hold a team at this level to 35 points, you're playing great defense," said Collins. "Our guys should be commended for that."
And what were the keys to that great defense?
"I thought we were able to take them out of stuff because we were able to switch a lot. When you have four guys that are all the same size and that are all athletic, you can take teams out of their continuity offenses and some of the things they like to do. I thought that really bothered them. I thought that was a big reason.
"And I really thought James just pressuring the ball to start the game. That set a tone. Whoever's on the ball, that guy sets the tone for his whole team. He's the head of the monster. And if you're behind a guy who's just busting his tail, and he's diving, and he's pressuring the ball, it's going to give you energy. That's what I thought he did. He didn't score a point and his numbers are going to look like he didn't do much in the game. But he was a big reason we won."
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The `Cats were up a dozen at halftime, up by as much as 20 in the second half, and were never really threatened. They got solid efforts from Crawford (15 points, nine rebounds) and Olah (10 and six) and Cobb (11 and 3 as well as five assists and three steals) , and had an impressive 13 assists on their 18 field goals. They did not allow the Broncos an offensive rebound in the first half ("For us, that's a huge milestone," said Collins), and on the night grabbed 43 rebounds to the Broncos' 36.
That all testifies to the fight they exhibited this evening and more than atoned for their paucity of points (51) and their own poor shooting (32.7 percent overall, 15.8 percent on their threes). "I chalk that up to, look, we've had a really tough stretch," said Collins, referring to a schedule that has taken his `Cats to the West Coast twice as well as to North Carolina. "Our guys are tired. They are."
"We don't have our legs under us real well," said Crawford, explaining its effect. "We're a great shooting team, but the last couple of games we've been struggling with it. But after this week (when they are off for finals) we'll get a chance to get our legs back under us and we'll start feeling good again. You know, good shooters always go through periods where you have tough shooting stretches. But you've got to stay with it. We'll get back to it."
And will Collins go back to Montgomery as his starting point for the long run?
"It's hard to not go with him again. We played our best game," he said. "But look. It's never about I'm going to go with someone in the long run. Every day I'm going to do what's necessary for us to get better. We're trying to set a tone for our program. This is a long-- I'm in it for the long haul and we're trying to set a tone, and the tone is we fight every game. We had a couple games, and in particular on Wednesday, I didn't feel we fought. I'll live with the results if we fight. I didn't feel like we fought like we needed to on Wednesday and my instincts told me I needed to shake it up. It was nothing against anybody, nothing against the two guys who didn't start. I just felt we needed an infusion of something else and James and Niko did that for us from an energy perspective."
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Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, Collins' old coach and boss, was in town recruiting, and dropped by Welsh-Ryan to watch his former assistant at work. Later, he addressed the `Cats. "His message," remembered Crawford, "was to keep fighting as a team, to make sure we're doing things together, to play with the right attitude and to just fight every night. He talked about Coach Collins and his enthusiasm as a player, and he's got the same thing as a coach, and that's something we've got to embrace."
"It was an honor to have him at our game," Collins himself finally said, and then he grinned sheepishly. "I laughed about it afterwards. I was never known for my defense when I played. So for him to be a a game where my team holds a team to 35 points, that means a lot to me."
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