Northwestern University Athletics
UIC In Review
12/23/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Chris Collins is not given to stasis, especially in the face of undesired results. He is then an ardent proponent of change, which he again reflected clearly last Saturday afternoon. His `Cats, through this season, had regularly started their games at a lugubrious pace. So here, before they went out to face Western Michigan, he altered what had been their routine.
He removed the chairs that had been there for them in the locker room when they returned from their first warmup. "He felt when we sat in the chairs, we slumped down and lost our energy and lost our sharpness," point Bryant McIntosh will explain. "So (now) we're standing there jumping around, staying lathered up a little bit. We don't cool down after our warmups."
Then, his pre-game instructions complete, he had his players line up and link arms. "To show the whole team," says McIntosh, "that we're together. We're not alone."
Finally, in front of them, he laid a strip of tape, and here he said, "This is where we draw the line. We don't let anybody else cross this line. This is where we stop everybody."
"We're trying to be a little bit more rah-rah versus locked into strategy just to try and get some life," Collins himself will say, explaining this change. "I felt we were talking a little bit too much and it was getting our guys inward instead of coming out like they're charging up the hill. So we've been a little bit more with rah-rah."
His `Cats, that day, would defeat the Broncos, and again the chairs were gone from their locker room before their Monday matinee with UIC. But here Collins did not tell them to line up and link arms. Still, center Alex Olah will say, "As a group, we did the same thing. We thought it would bring us together, and (say) we're going to play for each other."
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The Flames, on Monday, jumped off to a 2-0 lead with just 18 seconds gone. But then Olah tied it up with a strong move to the basket, Sanjay Lumpkin forced a turnover, Olah hit a jumper, and this game's tone was set. The Flames would miss their next 13 shots, the `Cats would make seven-of-their-first-10 and, with just 10 minutes gone, they were up 15 and on their way to a comfortable 17-point win. McIntosh would lead them with 22 points while dropping seven of his nine shots, Olah would add 17 while collecting seven rebounds, and as a team they would shoot a gaudy 53.7 percent.
"Who knows if (the new routine) is the reason," Collins would later say of his team's fast start, and that was a fair enough question. But what was unquestionable were the effects wrought by another change the `Cats recently made. That would be a change to their defense, which just last Wednesday was blown up by Central Michigan as it ran away with a 13-point win.
The Chippewas, that night, shot 58.3 percent overall and 55.6 percent on their threes, and regularly gashed the `Cats with easy drives to the rim. "We really got exposed in the Central Michigan game and sometimes that's what it takes," Collins would reflect on Monday. "Sometimes you have to get exposed to embrace change. I think that's what that game did for us."
What change did they embrace?
"We had to adjust our defense a little bit," he said. "We were extended a little bit too much. Teams were just driving by us, getting in our paint, and either scoring or hitting guys for open shots. We've done a better job of playing team defense. Five guys. Help side has been better. We've been plugging gaps a lot better, having teams play outside-in on us. I've noticed there's more of a spark to our guys defensively, there's more of a belief. There's more of an embrace-- when you play a game like Central Michigan and they're dicing you up, you know you've got to change. It's not working what you're doing. I think our guys have done a good job of changing our defensive habits."
"We knew we slacked," Olah would soon echo. "We weren't playing together. We were playing as individuals. We were all about ourselves. Guarding our own man. Not letting our own man score. Not helping our teammates. Not talking. We figured out what we had to do. We had to play more as a group, and play together."
"We had to learn from it," McIntosh would finally say. "We made too many mistakes. We were playing almost alone. We didn't have any energy. We weren't executing. And coach talked about how we were playing soft and stupid. Those were the two things."
There was nothing soft or stupid about them three days later when they topped Western Michigan by six, and that was again true on Monday. They held the Flames to just 16 first-half points, to just 46 points on the day. They limited the Flames to 17.1 percent shooting in the first half, to 25 percent shooting for the game. They--most significantly--confronted the Flames together, harassed the Flames and together responded whenever the Flames flurried just a little bit and appeared poised for a run.
Never would their lead fall below seven. Never would their win be truly endangered. Then, down the stretch, they expertly controlled the clock and made the free throws they were awarded as the Flames desperately fouled. "I think these last two games it was more like the defense that our program has been accustomed to seeing," Collins would later say, and he was right.
But there was more at work here too and that was revealed by McIntosh, who was asked what he had meant earlier when he had said the `Cats were playing alone in that Central game. "(That's) when you're consumed with you own personal things," he explained. "Am I playing well? Am I scoring? Have I got a shot? I need to rebound. It's personal things rather than thinking about how can we beat the other team.
"I think a lot of players can be effected by that, thinking am I playing well instead of are we playing well. It's (got to be) a we before me thing."
NOTES: Freshman forward Scottie Lindsey injured his foot late in the first half Monday and sat out the rest of the game. "I don't know what it is yet. Hopefully, it's nothing serious," Collins later said. . . Senior guard JerShon Cobb, who has sat out the last four games, could play Saturday when the `Cats host Northern Kentucky. "The plan is to try and get him going now," Collins said Monday. "When we came into this thing, the plan was to shut him down through today, give him a couple weeks to not bang on those legs and see if we could spring some life out of them. We'll see."
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