Northwestern University Athletics
Iowa In Review
2/16/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Finally their long nightmare was at an end. After five soul-searing defeats that were not settled until the last minute; after a handful of other defeats that were determined long before the end; after a month of defeats that had saddled them with a 10-game losing streak, the `Cats were at last poised to topple Iowa on this Sunday afternoon at Welsh-Ryan.
Just 10.8 seconds remained here after point Bryant McIntosh pushed their lead to three with a pair of free throws and now, out of a time out, the Hawkeyes were in desperate mode. They pushed the ball up the court, and swung it to Jarrod Uthoff beyond the arc on the right side, and now the clock was under five and `Cat Vic Law was in the forward's grill. Still Uthoff went up from 27-feet, went up and double-pumped and delivered, and with 2.4 seconds left drilled the three that suddenly tied this one up and sent it flying into overtime.
"I was like, `Man, are you kidding me? Can't we get a break?'" `Cat center Alex Olah would later say.
"You're first reaction is you're just dejected," said `Cat guard Tre Demps. "It was like a knife to my heart."
Often in the previous month the `Cats collective heart had been broken and now they again faced the kind of rejection that does just that. But Chris Collins, a fighter, spit in the eye of that conceit. "We're going to win!" he told his team when it huddled.
"We're going to win!" he said again.
"We're going to win!" he said one more time.
"Coach said it like 15 times in a row, `We're going to win! We're going to win! We're going to win!'" remembered Olah. "And we're like, `Yeah, we're going to win.' We stayed positive. We said we're going to finish this game."
"Coach," said Demps, "did an unbelievable job when we got in the huddle encouraging us that we're going to win this game. You just felt we were going to win. We had positive looks."
"The looks I saw in the huddle," said Collins himself, "were different than the looks I saw at Michigan State (an overtime loss), or down the stretch against Ohio State (a two-point loss), or at Maryland (a last-second loss) in the last couple minutes. It was a different look. It was a determined look."
"I think we're growing up," said Demps when asked what caused that transformation. "I think we realized our body language plays a huge part into how we're going to come out the next couple plays. When you can look into another guys' eyes and say `He's with me in the battle,' it gives you great encouragement to lay your body on the line to make that play you need to make."
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On Tuesday against Michigan State, in the loss that stretched their nightmare to 10 games, the `Cats body language was not good. Their heads were down and their shoulders were slumped and their faces reflected the look of the damned, and they performed listlessly while falling by 24. That, Collins said Sunday, led to "Some good soul searching with each other.
"We got together and said, `Look. Forget about what our record is. We've got a month left to the season. Let's start fresh. Let's get ourselves together. Let's wipe the slate clean and let's be the team we all want to be with our fight, with our spirt.' To their credit, they responded. It's all on the guys. They're the ones playing."
On Sunday his guys did play with renewed vigor, with refurbished fervor, and never once did their spirit waver through a game that evolved into a tense-and-taut drama. Their active zone defense slowed Iowa, which loves to run, and their early threes staked them to a 10-point lead with just over 12 minutes gone. The Hawkeyes themselves now switched to a zone, which limited the `Cats to a single point over the next seven minutes, but a Demps' three with eight seconds remaining in the half sent them to their locker room up three.
This one was now clearly a stare down, a test of will as much as of skill, and as it hurtled toward its conclusion, any number of `Cats bared their souls and proved their grit. Freshman forward Gavin Skelly, on consecutive possessions, put home an offensive rebound and then, on the other end, blocked Hawkeye star Aaron White. "His minutes really uplifted us," Collins would say of him.
Point Dave Sobolewski, relegated to a backup role as a senior, came off the bench to hit two of his four three-point attempts, and the freshman McIntosh, the performer who supplanted him, scored 18 points and handed out four assists and committed just one turnover in 41 willful minutes. "The kid's got the heart of a lion," Collins said of him.
Olah too was lion-hearted this day, collecting 11 points and 13 rebounds and five blocks while anchoring the zone, and the same was true of freshman forward Scottie Lindsey, who finished with seven points and six rebounds and three blocks of his own. "He showed glimpses of who he is going to be with his athleticism," Collins said of him.
Then there was Demps, who ended with 16. "He did what Tre does," Collins said of him, and here that translated into dropping a three at 4:08 to pull the `Cats to within two and then dropping another three at 2:46 to put them up one. Now the end game was at hand, and Collins was urging the Welsh-Ryan crowd to get louder, but Hawkeye guard Mike Gessell quieted it with a three that put them up one at 1:54.
Now down came the `Cats, looking to regain the lead, but here McIntosh's entry pass to Lindsey was high and caromed off the backboard and was collected by Iowa's Josh Oglesby. That gave it a chance to extend its lead. But here White missed a right-baseline jumper, and the `Cats six-foot-six Sanjay Lumpkin tied up the Hawkeyes' seven-foot-one Adam Woodbury on the rebound, and the possession arrow gave the ball back to the `Cats.
Immediately, in an offensive-defensive switch, Nathan Taphorn replaced Lumpkin. He had missed the previous seven games with a stress-related injury, had not played in a game for a month, but here, as cool as the weather, he just buried a straight-on three to put the `Cats up two at :46.1. "That boosted our morale. I was so hyped," Olah would say of that shot, and then he boosted it further by dropping a pair of foul shots at :19.2 to put them up four.
But now Uthoff hit a three at :12 and then, after McIntosh's foul shots, another that put a knife in Demps' heart.
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Sanjay Lumpkin would not score a point during this afternoon. But now, early in the overtime, he made a pair of plays that are often lost in the swirling maelstrom that is a game. The first came at 3:27 when he fouled the 7-foot-1 Woodsbury as he went up for a clean dunk, and the second came a minute later when he did the same in the same situation. The Hawkeye would make just one of his four free throw attempts and later Collins noted, "That's winning basketball. Those are the kinds of plays we have to continue to make as we build our program."
Those plays, more importantly, kept momentum from the Hawkeyes, and a minute after Woodbury's last miss, Lindsey cut along the right baseline and Demps hit him with a perfect pass and Lindsey dropped a layup that put the `Cats up two at 1:29. Now Olah block White, and Uthoff missed a three, and Olah grabbed the rebound and was fouled at 1:05. He missed the first, made the second, and now Hawkeye Mike Gessell missed a three and White grabbed the rebound and, from the right side of the basket, zipped a pass toward the left corner.
He had an open teammate there, a teammate open enough to tie this game, but here Lumpkin made another play and picked the pass and got it to McIntosh. He was fouled and made two to put the `Cats up five at :44.5, but back came the Hawkeyes with a Uthoff layup and then a steal of a Demps' pass in the backcourt. Now they got it to White under the basket, and the 6-foot-9 senior went up for a layup, and--from behind--the 6-foot-5 freshman Lindsey blocked his shot and the ball was collected by Olah.
He made a pair at :19.3 to put the `Cats back up five, but still the Hawkeyes were not done, they pulled back to within three with an offensive rebound at :08.7. Now, before the inbounds pass could be made, they fouled Sobolewski, who was on the court for the first time since 10:26 remained in regulation. "It hasn't been easy for Dave," Collins would later say. "We've talked about it. I told him there was going to be some games this year where he was either going to make a big shot or some big free throws down the stretch to win."
"That's what a senior and a leader does," said Olah.
What Sobolewski did was calmly drop his free throws, and seconds later the `Cats long nightmare was over, and now Collins hugged McIntosh, hugged Demps, hugged Olah and Taphorn. Then he raised a fist towards the seats occupied by his players' parent, turned and did the same toward the seats used by his own parents, and now Olah put his right arm around Collins's shoulders, and Collins put his left arm around Olah's waist, and together they walked across the court to talk to the cameras. They were smiling.
"It's hard to win, guys. It's hard to win," Collins would later say. "That's why not everyone wins. If it was easy to win, everyone would win. It's hard to win, and our guys made a lot of great plays today to win this game."
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