Northwestern University Athletics
Houston Baptist In Review
11/15/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski takes a look back at the Northwestern men's basketball team's season-opening victory over Houston Baptist Friday night.
The 'Cats missed six of their first seven shots. Houston Baptist made five of its first six and, with less than five minutes gone, was up 10.
The Wildcats' defense, its calling card a season ago, was flat-footed as this first half of its first game of a new season made its way toward halftime. The Huskies had unveiled a new offense that had delivered them open lanes and, when that interlude arrived, they were up three and eight of their 12 field goals were layups.
Ricmonds Vilde, their 6-foot-11, 255-pound center from Latvia, was forceful through these 20 minutes. He would end them with eight points while going four-of-six from the field. Alex Olah, the `Cats 7-foot, 270-pound center from Romania, was passive through this same stretch. He would end them with three points on one-of-five shooting from the field.
Guard JerShon Cobb, another of the `Cats veterans, was even less productive here. He would miss all four of his shots in the first half and go to the locker room without a point. The same was true of one more of their vets, guard Tre Demps, who himself went to the locker room scoreless after also going 0-of-4 from the field.
"I give Houston Baptist a lot of credit," `Cat coach Chris Collins later said. "They have some older guys and I thought in the first half, their physicality knocked us back. They were bumping us around. They were physical on drives. Sometimes you get a false sense in the preseason, then you get smacked in the face. Teams are ready to play. They had two kids out there playing that were transfers from BCS level schools. Older guys.
"And they come in zero-zero."
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Curiosity surrounded the `Cats Friday night at Welsh-Ryan as they began the marathon that is any college basketball season. For this was a much-reconfigured team from the one they rolled out a year ago, a team replete with an acclaimed freshman class and a variety of offensive threats and all the possibilities that accompany a raw-and-unfinished product. They were, here, not even that proverbial work-in-progress. They were instead a blank slate, an empty canvas awaiting the first daubs of paint that would begin producing the portrait they would paint in the months to come.
The first of them to step up to the easel was Bryant McIntosh, their 6-foot-3 freshman point. He was their rock through their rocky first half, scoring nine and handing out four assists and committing nary a turnover and conducting them with all the aplomb of a veteran maestro. "I felt we were a little nervous coming in. It was our first game, for a lot of us our first game ever as a college player," he would later say. "Coach Collins is always talking about throw-yourself-into-the-game in a don't-worry-about-yourself kind of way. Think about the team. That was what I was reiterating to (his teammates)."
"I thought B-Mac really carried us for awhile," said Collins himself. "That's what he does. He's a baller. That's what I call him. He's not fazed by the level. He's got a long way to go. He's just starting his career. But it's nice to have him on our team. You feel like when he has the ball, we're in control. That's a nice feeling to have as a coach."
It's also nice for him to have the freshmen Vic Law, who scored seven in this first half while exhibiting a rare athleticism, and Scottie Lindsey, who provided eight bountiful minutes off the bench and hit one of his two three-point attempts. Still. Still. Olah was struggling and, historically, he does not respond well to slow starts. And Cobb and Demps were struggling and, historically, the `Cats lose when that is the case.
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The second half opened, Cobb missed a three, Vilde hit a jumper and Houston was up five. Now, on `Cat possessions over the next three minutes, Olah hit a pair of free throws, Sanjay Lumpkin tipped in an Olah miss, Cobb got his first basket of the night off a pretty Law feed and Olah gave them just their third lead of the night with another pair of free throws at 16:19.
The `Cats would never run away with this one. It would remain a grind right into the last minutes. But they were holding firm, they were finding a way, they were--most significantly--getting a response from Olah, who in these 20 minutes spit in the face of his history. "It was on me. I knew I started soft in the first half and I felt I let my team down," he would later say. "It was just up to me to pick it up and play better in the second half."
"I thought," said Collins, "(Vilde's) physicality was bothering Alex early. He was getting him off his spots and then he was having success offensively. It was getting Alex a little out of sorts. We just had to take the halftime to settle him down, but get on him a little bit. `We need you.' I felt in the first half that kid was outplaying him...(and) usually in the past, if he struggled early, he's had a hard time getting himself out of that. For him at halftime to regroup and come back with 18 big ones in the second half, we don't win without that production."
That is just what Olah did, hit the Huskies with 18 in the second half, and so it did not matter that McIntosh would go scoreless through those minutes or that Cobb would end the night with just five points or that Demps got his one-and-only point of the game on a free throw with just 14.7 second remaining. The `Cats would still win by seven. That is why, when this one was finally over, Collins would say, "When I look at the stat sheet, it kind of makes me smile. I see that two of our best guys, Tre and JerShon, are two-of-15. If those two guys went two-of-15 last year, we would have scored about 30 points.
"They're going to play a lot better. That's why I'm happy. We won with two of our main guys really struggling and we figured out how to win. Last year, no chance. So for us to see that Alex could step up, Bryant, Vic. I thought Sanjay was really solid. We found a way to win with two of our main guys struggling from the field. We had to dig deep for this one. I thought that was a positive.
"But we're still a work-in-progress. We're still trying to search and find. It's November 14th. It's going to be a long journey. That's why I said I'm happy to win. I know we didn't play our best. But it was great to get out there and have to dig down and fight and have to win a tough game."
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