Northwestern University Athletics
Illinois Primer
1/14/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
They had fallen behind by as much as 14, but still the `Cats refused to buckle. They instead steeled their spine, and flurried furiously, and reeled in Michigan State during their matinee last Sunday in that snake pit of a playpen called the Breslin Center. This was no small feat. The Spartans are tougher than a cheap cut of meat in their home. But here their toughness was matched by the `Cats, who carried them into overtime before finally falling.
Now they were alone, behind closed doors. "There were," freshman point Bryant McIntosh recalled on Tuesday, "a lot of broken hearts and a lot of tears in the locker room. We just laid it on the line and it didn't come out the way we wanted it to."
Then, soon enough, they clambered aboard their bus, where Chris Collins watched a tape of the game so recently ended as he and his team headed home. "It was quiet," McIntosh said of the ride.
"It was tough," is how junior guard Tre Demps described it. "You're thinking about what you could have done differently. You're trying to get it out of your mind. But you put so much into it that it kind of stays with you for awhile, especially on that bus ride home. It's a hard thing to lose like that."
"I thought we played great," Collins would say when asked what he thought as he viewed that loss. "You feel bad because we did everything we needed to do to win the game. A whistle here and a missed shot there and it's a different outcome. That's what was frustrating. I thought we did enough to win, and I was really proud of how we played, and I thought a lot of guys made big shots."
Finally, in darkness, they arrived back in Evanston, and now Collins addressed his `Cats before they scattered. "I told them," he recalled, "`Guys, listen. We've got to move on. We can feel bad on the bus ride home, we can drown our sorrows a little bit on that four-hour ride. But when we get off this bus, we've got to start thinking about Illinois. It's going to come quick. If you lose a tough game, nobody feels sorry for you. You've got to pick yourself back up and you've got to get ready for the next one.'"
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On Monday the `Cats began preparing for the next one, Illinois' Wednesday night visit to Welsh-Ryan. "We kind of let it (the Sunday loss) go yesterday," McIntosh said Tuesday. "We said, `It's a wash now. We've got to let it go and get prepared for this one.' In this league, if you let a hangover defeat you before your next game, you can be in trouble a long way."
"When we came back yesterday, it was all about getting ready for Illinois," echoed Collins. "Win or lose, you have to do that in this league. The league is too good. You've already seen, if you're not ready to play, it doesn't matter who you're playing, where you're playing, you've got to play at a high level to win in this league. It was a challenge for my staff and I. That was a tough loss for us. We put a lot into that game and we should have won the game. To be able to move forward yesterday and get ready for Illinois, I feel good about where the guys are at heading into tomorrow's game."
As he talked JerShon Cobb, the senior guard, practiced on the court behind him. He had been radiant in that Sunday game, dropping all five of his shots and totaling a dozen points. But with just over six minutes remaining in regulation, Spartan Center Gavin Schilling had landed on his tender right foot and he had exited for good. "It's always day-to-day," Collins said when asked about his status for Wednesday. "But seeing him bop around, and he wants to be out there, I see no reason why he wouldn't be ready to go."
The same can be assumed of all of the `Cats, and the reason is not just this rivalry game against their bitter foe. For, while they are still young and yet a work in progress, their performance against the Spartans gave them a glimpse of all their possibilities. "One of the biggest takeaways (from that performance) is we're capable of playing with just about anybody in this league-- with anybody in this league," explained Demps. "We have to continue that momentum. The game obviously was disappointing. But we've got to move on and use it as motivation to play against Illinois."
Over the last month, he is reminded, he and others have talked about this group establishing an identity. Does a game like Sunday's help in getting that done?
"For sure," he said, "I think we're getting closer and closer every game. I think we're real close to everything connecting. I think once everything connects we'll start winning a lot more. It's exciting. But at the same time, you can't relax. A lot of times, you start to relax after you play well. You've got to stay hungry, and you've got to keep competing and keep battling."
And what's the last piece to making that connection?
"I think closing out a big game. Michigan State, instead of losing that game when it's tied with a minute to go, coming out with a win. I think that kind of gets you over the hump."
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The `Cats, to remind, opened their Big Ten season with a win at Rutgers, which since then as beaten Penn State at home, lost at Nebraska and upset Wisconsin at home. Then, a week before their heartbreak in East Lansing, they lost to the Badgers by 23 at Welsh-Ryan. "I really think that Wisconsin game, it sucks getting blasted like that," Demps would say Tuesday. "But at the same time, it kind of gave everybody a wake-up call. I think it gave the older guys a wake-up call too, just to remind us what the Big Ten is like and how good the teams are. It woke everybody up to just how good this kind of basketball is, and it made us practice harder, play harder and resulted in us playing a pretty good game against Michigan State. I think we've carried that momentum, and hopefully it'll work out for us Wednesday."
"I don't know if it was a wake-up call," Collins would finally say when asked about that. "We knew how good Wisconsin was. Maybe it was good for our young guys. That was the first time they'd been in a game of that magnitude. I don't know. He would know better. He's got the mindset of the team in that locker room. I thought it was more, it was a really good team that just handled us that night. And I think it made our guys realize how hard it is to win against elite teams.
"Look. Everyone made light of the fact that we went into Rutgers and won. That's not looking all so bad now."
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