Northwestern University Athletics
Ohio State Primer
1/21/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
He knew the `Cats basketball history when he chose to join them, knew too that success would not arrive in the next day's mail. But already, in his first season with them, they have accumulated eight losses, and that is one more than he suffered through all of his career in both junior high and high school. (His record through that span was 109-7.) "It's a process, winning. I knew coming here it was going to be a process," the freshman point Bryant McIntosh will say when that point is raised.
"But some of these losses have been heartbreaking. It's tough. It's tougher than I thought it would be. . .and I'm probably not handling it very well. Each loss I kind of dwell on it. It's just part of it. I've got to learn. A little bit of growing pains. That's all that's going on."
"I love his competitiveness. I'm glad he cares that much. I'm glad he takes it hard," his coach, Chris Collins, later says of his guard's mindset. "That's one of the reasons we're getting better. He's a kid who's kind of leading that charge of wanting us to get to greater heights."
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Last Saturday, at Michigan, Bryant McIntosh again choreographed the `Cats charge, handing out eight assists with not a single turnover in 37 poised minutes. He was here a maestro, a Zubin Mehta of the hardwood, and now the ball was again in his hands with his team down two and the clock rushing toward zero. He was out beyond the arc here, a bit left of center, and quickly he drove and put up an eight-foot teardrop, one of his signature offerings. "A lot. A lot over my career," he will say softly when asked how many times he has made a shot just like that one.
But, he later explained. "When it left my hand, I knew I missed it. I didn't get the elevation I wanted on the shot, and it was short. I was just hoping we'd get an offensive rebound. We didn't."
The `Cats didn't, and the buzzer blared, and the Wolverines were victorious, and McIntosh slumped to the floor, where he was soon hearing this from Collins. "He told me he loved me," the guard remembered. "He said I'm going to make a lot of shots in my career, a lot of those shots, and he was glad I was on his team."
Then, after trailing Collins through the handshake line, he was in the locker room, where the consoling continued. "Basically I lost it," he said, recalling this scene, "and all the guys were all around me, patting me on my back, patting me on the chest and telling me this is just a game. Just telling me I'm going to be the guy who's going to help take us to where we want to go. That was nice of them. But it still didn't take away the pain."
"First of all, I like that. There's no one who cares more than he does," Collins will say when asked about that reaction. "That being said, I want him to understand, he played a brilliant game. He made every play against their one-three-one zone, got us shot after shot, and made a great play on the last play. He missed a drive that he's going to make nine out of 10 times. . . . Listen. If I'm in that situation a lot more times in that kid's four years, and he's got the ball in that situation, we're going to win a lot more than we lose.
"He wants the ball. When you want the ball, sometimes you're going to miss. But he'll move on. He'll move on, and he'll be good."
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The previous Sunday, at Michigan State, the `Cats had lost another heartbreaker in overtime, and then on Wednesday they had fallen at home in the last minute to Illinois. So now, his players battered, Collins gave them a day off, and then on Monday they did little more than watch film of Ohio State, which visits Welsh-Ryan Thursday night. "Last week was really tough on us emotionally," he will explain on Tuesday.
"We put a lot into those games, felt we could have won all three of them, came up short in all three. That's the reality. So I wanted them to get a couple days to recharge their minds, to kind of digest what happened last week so we could come back today and really be fresh and really start attacking preparation for Ohio State."
Yet escape was not yet possible for Bryant McIntosh, who viewed that Michigan game three times on the `Cats bus ride home from Ann Arbor. Then on Sunday, he will say, "I don't know if I left my room too much. I was kind of locked in my room thinking about it, thinking about the entire game, not just the one shot I missed. Just the entire game and how bad it sucked to lose that game. . . . There wasn't a lot of sleep. It was a tough one to swallow. "
Even on Monday, he will admit, he couldn't get it down, but on Tuesday here was McIntosh, the first `Cat out for their afternoon practice. "You've got to get ready for the next game," he will say when asked how he finally digested that loss. "At some point you've just got to let it go and just get prepared for the next one." happening the next two days," Collins said of him.
"The great thing about basketball is you get back out there," Chris Collins will finally say. "A lot of time in football, or other sports, you've got to wait a full week and hear about it. In basketball, two days and you play. So, good or bad, you've got to move forward. . . . We can't lose our fighting spirit. When you're a young group, you have a tendency when you don't get the results and you know you leave it all on the floor, you might have a tendency to get a little bit deflated. That's my challenge, and the challenge for my staff. happening the next two days," Collins said of him.
"These guys know they're close. They know we're right there. We're going toe-to-toe with all these teams. We just have to figure out how to finish the deal at the end." happening the next two days," Collins said of him.
NOTES: Forward Nathan Taphorn is suffering from a stress reaction in his right foot and will sit out both the Buckeye game and the `Cats Sunday visit to Maryland. "We'll evaluate where he's at before our (Jan. 31) Purdue game," Collins said of his future. . . . But forward Vic Law, who dinged his elbow against the Wolverines, was fine on Tuesday. "He should be good to go barring anything crazy happening the next two days," Collins said of him.
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