Northwestern University Athletics
Elon In Review
11/23/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Now the `Cats are off to Mexico, where they face Miami on Tuesday and either Virginia Tech or Northern Iowa on Wednesday in the final two games of the Cancun Challenge. They fly south at 4-0 after topping Elon by a point in overtime on Saturday at Welsh-Ryan. Notes, quotes and observations on both that affair and their perfect start.
•The `Cats were facing their fourth game in nine days when they trotted out to face Elon, and they were a tired group. The Phoenix, in contrast, had not played in a week and so, throughout this afternoon, it was more physical and more aggressive, it was quicker to the ball and quicker to react. Still, in the end, the `Cats found the reserve and the resolve to win. "I gave our group everything I had just because I felt no energy today," Chris Collins would later say, himself more muted than usual in his post-game press conference.
"As a coach, when you feel no energy, I'm sweating through my suit, I'm doing everything I can to get our guys to find something in this game. I'm really excited. We dug down. We had to really fight for this one. Hopefully our guys will learn from Elon. I told their coach that. I was really impressed with how hard they played."
• Tre Demps, whose late jumper toppled North Florida on Thursday, had a chance to win this one in regulation as well. But here, on a clear-out, he drove hard from the top of the circle, spun at the foul line, then offered up a shot that hit the front of the rim. "I knew pre-game I'd have to go to something different (from the move he had used on Thursday)," he later said. "I tried my spin move, which I have in my back pocket. It fell a little bit short. I was hoping it would hit the front rim and bounce in. But it didn't."
But later, with the `Cats down a point and less than a minute remaining in overtime, he got another chance and this time he did not miss. This time he made a strong move on Phoenix guard Kevin Blake, then pulled up at the foul line and drove his shot home. "He's a really good defender, a strong kid," Demps said of this play. "I was going to try to maybe draw another foul. But he did a great job of cutting me off, and that was a natural move. He forced me to take a tough one. I was fortunate enough to hit it."
• On the Phoenix possession preceding that shot, it ran a pick-and-roll that got forward Ryan Winters a look at a layup. But here `Cat freshman forward Gavin Skelly blocked the shot and grabbed the rebound. Now, after Demps' make, its Elijah Bryant drove into a scrum of bodies under the basket and lost the ball, and Skelly dove for it and tipped it off Blake and out-of-bounds to give it back to the `Cats. "He's a little bit more mobile than Alex and at the end of games, what it breaks down to a lot is a pick-and-roll or it's going to be a quick-hitting set," Collins later said, explaining why he played defense-offense with Skelly and Alex Olah down this one's stretch.
"Gavin can move his feet a little better, so I like his ability to stay in front of a guy. He's mobile enough, he can switch out on guys, then you don't get strung out on a pick and roll. He's just a little better athlete, a little quicker, a little bit better with moving his feet."
• On the ensuing `Cat possession Olah missed a pair of free throws with 25 seconds remaining, which was a fitting end to his rough afternoon. He did have a game-high dozen rebounds here. But he made one of only three field goal attempts, hit just half of his six free throw attempts and committed three turnovers. "He's been pretty tentative," Collins would say of both this performance and his overall early-season performance.
"I don't expect him to play perfect. But I'd like him to be more aggressive. He hasn't played as well, he hasn't finished as well, so he's a little reluctant to go up strong around the basket. I don't want him to play without courage. I want him to go for it. We need him. He knows that. For us to be a good team, we need him to be a solid presence for us inside."
• Those misses meant Collins couldn't get Skelly in on defense, but here Olah was quick enough to block a jumper by Phoenix center Tony Sabato. The ball went out off `Cat forward Vic Law and so, with 5.3 second remaining, Elon called time and drew up its final play.
The 6-foot-7 Law would end this game with 16 points while going four-of-nine from the field and eight-of-nine from the line, and that production was important. But he did his most valuable work defending 6-foot-4 Phoenix guard Elijah Bryant. In the first half, against an array of `Cat guards, he went four-of-seven from the field, but then Law took him on and stymied him. "I was just using my length," he would explain. "I'm pretty good at sliding my feet and I stayed in front of him, made him take tougher shots. In the first half he was getting to the basket too easily and shooting over our guards in the mid-range area. In the second half, I was able to cut off driving lanes for him and make him take long, difficult twos."
Still, in its huddle, Elon drew up a play for Bryant, who got the ball on the right side and offered just before the buzzer. "I knew he was their best playmaker off the ball and I thought they were going to do some iso for him and they did," recalled Law. "I probably did a bad job of letting him catch it too low. He was trying to get into me and draw a foul, and I tipped it. It was a great call to set him up. I'm just glad he missed it."
• That preserved the `Cat win, but before we leave it, a brief word about freshman Johnnie Vassar. He is their quicksilver freshman point, a blur at full speed, and Saturday Collins inserted him into this game with his team down nine early in the second half. This was his very first appearance of the season, but in quick order he forced Bryant into a miss; drew a charge on Bryant; drew a foul on Phoenix guard Luke Eddy; and hit a jumper from the left elbow. "I felt no energy in there. I felt we were tired," Collins would say, explaining Vassar's appearance. "My instincts told me to give him a chance. I thought he really helped us, especially with his energy."
"Those guys brought pop," echoed Demps, here speaking of both Vassar and Skelly. "I felt their energy. When they came in, you could feel the difference."
• And so the `Cats won even though they were tired; even though their opponent hit 55.6 percent of its three-point attempts; even though they had little time to prep for that opponent; even though their freshman point, Bryant McIntosh, scuffled for the first time in his young career; even though Olah was tentative and senior JerShon Cobb missed all four of his field goal attempts and three-point specialist Nathan Taphorn hit only one of his four attempts from beyond the arc. They won at the line, where they outscored the Phoenix by 20 while going 27-of-37, and they won with their spine. "It took guts," Tre Demps would say of this win, and he was correct, and that is a positive where hopes can be hung.
• Big picture, these final two takes from Collins, the realist. "We have to play a lot better. Our guys know it," he said at one point on Saturday. "Some of these guys, they don't quite fully believe me when I tell them how tough it is to play at this level. Then we get out in these games and we get knocked back. When you get knocked back, it's hard. The other team gets confidence and it's kind of like you've been hit with a right hook. You're staggered and now you don't know how to get back. Look. At the end of the day, our goal was to win these four games. We've done that. We haven't played our best basketball. We have a big area of growth with this team and we'll keep striving for that. It's great to be able to stand here knowing we pulled that game out. Like I told (Elon) Coach (Matt) Matheny, I thought their kids, I thought quite frankly they outplayed us. They deserved to win. But credit our guys for digging down and making enough plays to win the game."
Then, later, he offered this: "I think we're playing hard and our attitudes are good. But we've got to find a little bit more fight, a little bit more spirit. It's on me to bring it out of those guys. But it's also part of this group. The one thing I felt with our group last year was, win or lose, those kids gave everything they had. I'm not saying our guys aren't playing hard. They are. But I just want them to leave everything on the floor, and I think that's another jump that our team can make."
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