Northwestern University Athletics
Michigan State In Review
2/11/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
This loss was different, this one to Michigan State that pushed the `Cats losing streak to 10. The first seven in that string, which were tighter than designer jeans on a sumo wrestler, were enervating and gut wrenching and heart breaking. Each of the two that then followed resulted from a poor four-minute stretch, but still included 36 minutes of effort that were artful and admirable and reflective of a team to be respected.
But this one, this 24-point defeat they suffered Tuesday night at Welsh-Ryan, it was different, as different as it was unexpected. "Obviously, for us tonight, it was a very disappointing night," Chris Collins would later say. "Tonight wasn't indicative of how we've played in terms of effort and fight and competitiveness. I don't know what it was. I can't explain it. We didn't have it tonight. And give Michigan State credit. I thought they played really hard. I thought they played like a team with an amazing sense of urgency about a game they had to win, and we didn't have that.
"For the first time tonight, I felt like I saw some guys with their heads down a little bit, that looked a little defeated. We've talked about it. When you go through a stretch and you're not rewarded, and you don't get the results, you fight that. It's human nature to get a little bit beat down. Tonight was the first time I really noticed it in a game."
"I've been in his shoes and when you've got a young team and some things go wrong, it's hard to lose games by one point, two points," echoed Spartan coach Tom Izzo. "When a younger team gets beaten up like they've been, that's tough. So we caught them at the right time. I still think they're a good team that did not play as well tonight as they've been playing."
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The `Cats scored the first points of this game, which came on a pair of foul shots by point Bryant McIntosh. But less than a minute later the Spartans went up one on a three by Denzel Valentine and never again would they trail. The `Cats would stay close over the next seven minutes and were down just three at 10:47 after a three by Tre Demps. But now came the tsunami that washed away both them and their hopes for this evening.
They were without JerShon Cobb, who was sidelined once again by his damaged right foot. They were without Nathan Traphorn, who sat for the seventh straight game with his own foot issues. They were, ultimately, without any answers for the Spartans, whose size and speed and strength and sense of urgency simply swept over the `Cats here. They were up 12 at 8:36, up 20 at 5:19, up 24 at the end of a half in which the `Cats managed to score just 14 points.
Their offense, through this stretch, was more active than the `Cats defense, which could not slow the Spartans with either a zone or in straight man-to-man. They would, in this half, make nine of their 18 three-point attempts (50 percent) and go 14-of-29 overall (48.3 percent). Their defense, in turn, simply smothered the `Cats, which produced these unlikely facts.
Through the last 10:47 of the first half, the `Cats managed just a single point and were outscored 22-1.
Through all of the first half, Demps went four-of-seven from the field and the rest of the `Cats, 0-of-15.
At the end of the first half, Demps had 10 points and McIntosh had four free throws and the rest of the `Cats had donuts.
"When you're playing a good team, you're not going to be in a good position if you have only four field goals in a half," Collins would later understate.
"We," said Izzo, "might have played our best half of basketball and, as I told Chris after, I thought Northwestern played maybe its worst half."
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Izzo, in a courtly gesture, took the air out of his team's offensive tires after its lead grew to 35 in the second half, and his Spartans were content to run clock through this one's last 11 minutes. That stemmed the deluge, yet later Collins was still left to consider what he had witnessed and what he must do in the future.
The questions here had little to do with Xs and Os, which had a minimal role on this night. They instead centered on the `Cats belly, on their resolve. "The thing that I was disappointed in is I didn't think we played hard enough to be worthy of winning. I didn't feel we had the sense of fight that we have been having," he would say at one point. "Even in the last couple of games that we lost, I still felt we had the effort, we had the fight. Tonight I didn't feel that fight. That's what's most disappointing, and I take responsibility for that."
"We've got to find some energy again," he would say minutes later. "This is the first game I felt we were a little bit beaten down. Heads were down a little bit more. Our youth showed. We didn't have our normal fight, and that's concerning. I was saying all along, the one thing I was so proud of our team was through all those close losses, we kept getting off the mat, we kept fighting. But sooner or later you have to be rewarded. That's what I was most concerned about. You can get beat down. You have to feel that joy of doing something good and we haven't had that. That's tough."
"Tonight we were just a step slow," Chris Collins would finally say. "I don't know. It was weird. Even Coach Izzo said it wasn't indicative of how our team has played. But you can't let this become a trend. I'm not going to just chalk this up to, `Oh, we had a bad night.' We've got to reenergize. We've got seven more league games. We're not just going to lay down. That's not going to be allowed.
"We've got to understand that it wasn't there tonight, and we've got to find it again."
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