Northwestern University Athletics
Northwestern
14-4, 4-3
Illinois
11-8, 2-5
| Team | 1 | 2 | F |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northwestern | 36 | 32 | 68 |
| Illinois | 33 | 34 | 67 |
Team Stats
Game Leaders
Players Mentioned
Northwestern Nets Clutch Win at Illinois, 68-67
1/22/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Northwestern regained the lead with under a minute to play and the Wildcats escaped Champaign with 68-67 victory over the Illinois Fighting Illini. The 'Cats have won five of the last eight contests against their downstate rivals.
Northwestern's Christen Inman scored two of her game-high 18 points with 59 seconds to play. The Wildcats led 66-64 when Illinois' Amarah Coleman came up with a steal with 34 seconds to go. Sixteen seconds later she turned it over, but the Illini let about 10 seconds run off the clock before fouling Inman. The sophomore calmly drilled a pair of free throws with eight seconds left to put the Wildcats ahead, 68-64. Coleman made a 3-pointer at the buzzer to account for the final margin.
"It was a hard-fought game that could have went in a lot of different directions," said Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown. "I was really proud of our team. We were down by 10 and we really kept our poise when they came at us. Christen Inman and Maggie Lyon both stepped up at the end and made plays."
The first half proved to be a series of runs on both sides of the court. The Fighting Illini built a couple of early three-point leads in the first half, including one (10-7) with 15:15 left in the frame on a layup by Jacqui Grant. The Wildcats responded to the deficit by ripping off a 14-3 run of their own that finished at the 9:01 mark when Nia Coffey found Alex Cohen under the basket for an easy deuce. The Wildcats led by eight at that point, but they would not stop there. The Purple and White scored seven unanswered points over the span 52 seconds to take their largest lead of the half, 30-17, with 5:36 remaining.
After the 'Cats built the double-digit lead, the shots stopped falling for a spell. Northwestern was held without a point until Inman knifed in for a jumper in the paint with 1:51 left in the half. While the Wildcats were not getting anything to fall, the Illini used a 13-0 run to knot the game at 30-30 before Inman stopped the bleeding and regained the lead for her team.
The Wildcats took a three-point lead into the locker room at the half, 36-33. Neither team shot the ball at an overwhelming clip in the first half, with both sides firing below 39 percent. The Illini were slightly better from behind the arc, hitting 6 of their 11 attempts. The home team did turn the ball over 11 times in the opening 20 minutes.
Cohen provided a heavy dose of offense for the 'Cats with 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting, including 2-of-3 from downtown. She also added three rebounds in the half.
Illinois continued to sustain the momentum built at the end of the first half as play resumed in Champaign. The home team scored 11 of the first 16 points to take a 44-41 lead with a shade over 14 minutes remaining in the contest. Brittany Carter had the hot hand early for the Illini as she scored six of the team's first 11 points in the stanza.
Inman buried a 3-pointer from the left slot to tie the game at 44, but a pair of turnovers and a pair of missed 3-pointers by Northwestern's shooters aided an 8-0 run for the home team. Leading 52-44, Illinois had its largest lead of the ballgame with 11:43 left to go in Champaign.
Northwestern continued to fall victim to Illinois' swarming defensive pressure, Coffey was finally able to get the ball in the paint and convert a few good looks inside as she scored six straight points for her team to cut the deficit down six points at the 8:57 mark (56-50).
Illinois held a five-point lead with 4:52 to go when Maggie Lyon split a pair at the line to make it a four-point game, 60-56. On the other end of the floor, Lyon came up with a steal, one of three on the night, before drilling a 3-pointer at the other end to make it a one-point game. Thirty seconds later Karly Roser netted a pair from the charity stripe to give the Wildcats a 61-60 edge.
The two teams traded a few scores before Lyon drilled another triple to tie the game, 64-64, with 2:31 left on the clock. The next basket was Inman's game-winning shot with under a minute to go.
Northwestern scored 29 points off of 24 Illinois turnovers in the game. In the second half alone, the Wildcats outscored the opposition 16-6 off turnovers. Illinois came into the game leading the Big Ten in turnover margin, but it was the visiting team that finished the game with a difference of +3.
Inman led four Wildcats in double figures with a season-high 18 points on 7-of-11 from the floor. Cohen and Lyon each scored 14 points, with the latter adding a team-high seven rebounds. Lyon now owns 997 career points in an NU uniform.
Northwestern has won five of the last eight games against the Illini and it leads the all-time series, 36-34. Six of the last nine games in the series have been decided by just four points or less and the 'Cats have won five of those six ballgames.
The Wildcats conclude this two-game road trip on Sunday, January 25 against Penn State at the Bryce Jordan Center in University Park, Pa. The game against the Nittany Lions, the only one this regular season, will tip off at 1 p.m. CST and it will be streamed live on BTN Plus on BTN2GO. The game can also be heard on WNUR - 89.3 FM.
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