Northwestern University Athletics
Indiana In Review
2/26/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Their `Cats are already up 14 and cruising, and now point Bryant McIntosh is driving hard from the right wing and rising for a layup. He is as wide open as the plains of Kansas, but somehow, someway, he misses, and in quick order Indiana grabs the rebounds and pushes the ball up the court and gets a baby jumper from forward Troy Williams. The Hoosiers are pressing now with just over three minutes remaining in this Wednesday night stare down at Welsh-Ryan, and here their guard Robert Johnson picks Tre Demps` handoff to McIntosh and converts the turnover into the layup that pulls them to within 10 at 2:55. Immediately, Chris Collins calls a timeout.
Now his `Cats cruise has encountered rough waters and inevitably, eerily, echoes from their January losing streak cut resonate in the arena. But, Collins would say later, "We just reenforced we're going to win the game. We tried to calm their nerves. We still had a 10-point lead. We said be strong with the ball, get to open areas, hit open people, when they foul you, hit our free throws. I liked the look I saw in the huddle. The guys were confident. That's what happens when you've won some games. They stop thinking about how they're going to lose, and they start thinking about how are we going to win this thing."
Did he have any flashbacks?
"I'm done with flashbacks," he said sternly. "Once we turned the page, I closed the book on what happened before that."
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They turned the page on Feb. 10, the night they were beat down at home by Michigan State. Before that the `Cats had agonizingly lost five games in the last minute, had lost other games after suffering fatal droughts, but here they had appeared woebegone and had offered no challenge as they dropped their 10th straight.
Collins had noticed the hanging heads and the sagging shoulders and the absence of energy, and later he and his staff gathered in his office to talk. "My instinct was, `We're not going to go down like this,'" he would recall Wednesday night. "That's not how I'm wired. It's not how my staff's wired. We stayed up all night and got our heads together said said, `What can we do? What can we do to turn this thing around?'"
Some of what they did was tactical, like switching to a zone defense. Some was strictly psychological, like telling the `Cats to wipe the slate clean and to start their season anew. Some, even, bordered on the trivial, like playing rap music as they warmed up for practice. But no matter what it was, Collins would continue, "To their credit, they (his players) bought in. We can say all this stuff, come up with all these ideas. But unless those guys believe and buy into what you're saying, it's not going to happen. So it's a testament to what those kids did. They said, `You know what? You're right. Let's have a great month.'"
That month began five days later with their overtime upset of Iowa, and then came a win at Minnesota and a rout of Penn State. That sent them soaring into their affair with Indiana, where they would try to give the program its first four-game conference winning streak since 1968, and here again their new selves were put on public displayed.
The were put on display quickly as the Hoosiers, the Big Ten's highest scoring team (79.2 ppg), battered them and their zone with a barrage of threes. They hit five of their first seven, seven of their first 10, nine of their 14 in the first half, and behind them rolled up 40 points. But the `Cats did not flinch, never did they waver. They instead responded with a plethora of performers of their own.
Center Alex Olah scored 10 in this half and Tre Demps added seven and then there was freshman forward Vic Law, whose own resurrection against Minnesota and Penn State had helped key the resurrection of the `Cats. Here he simply added to his string of stellar displays, chipping in 11 points as they went to the locker room tied with the Hoosiers at 40. "I wanted to slow it down a little bit, I really did," Collins would later say.
"I didn't feel there was any way we could win a shootout. The pace was too fast, too high-scoring. We weren't going to win a game in the 80s. I said to the team at halftime, whatever team has an extended series of stops is going to win the game."
Those stops would not come early in the second half, this one still hurtling like an express train through its first seven minutes. But then, after a Demps' reverse layup put the `Cats up three, the 6-foot-5 Scottie Lindsey blocked the 6-foot-7 Hoosier Williams and their defense began to assert itself. "I thought," Collins later said, "we did a poor job in the first half locating the shooters when we were getting broken down.
"In the second half, even though they missed some, I think we did a little better job of getting them off their spots. Their shots weren't nearly as in rhythm as they were in the first half. I thought our wings were fantastic in the second half. Sanjay Lumpkin, I thought he was everywhere in the zone. He was covering a lot of different areas. I thought Law was doing the same."
"Our wings made our job a lot easier," agreed Demps. "They did an unbelievable job talking, getting out to the corner shooters, guarding the short corner. They made the guards' job really easy. All we had to do was fight over those ball screens they were setting at the top."
That is how the `Cats now shut down the Hoosiers, who would go for over 10 minutes without scoring a point and would go just three-of-17 from beyond the arc in the second half. Demps, in stark contrast, was brilliant in these 30 minutes, shredding Indiana's shifting defense for 16 points on his way to a game-high 23, and with that the `Cats were cruising.
But now, with just under three minutes remaining, that cruise encountered rough waters.
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The `Cats were still up 10 after their timeout, but again they turned it over and now their lead was eight at 2:12. Demps steadied them with a pair of free throws and then, after the Hoosiers missed one more three, Olah made two more after grabbing the rebound and getting fouled. They were up 12 now at 1:33, were up 13 after Dave Sobolewski made one-of-two from the line at 1:15. But here Hoosier Yogi Ferrell dropped a three, McIntosh turned over the inbounds pass and Hoosier Johnson dropped another three to bring them within seven at :51.3.
Still this one was not over, still those old echoes lingered, but one last time the `Cats manifested their new resolve, Olah calmly hitting a pair of free throws at :16.8 to close out their seven-point win. Then, minutes later, here came Collins into the post-game interview room, and under his black suit coat was not a shirt-and-tie, but a simple gray tee-shirt. "It's not my new look for the next game. I apologize," he said, unnecessarily.
It was, instead, a look necessitated by the bath his players had given him in the locker room, where they drench him after any Big Ten win. The ritual started last season after he got the first of his young career over Illinois and now, said Olah, "I think it's a habit."
"Coach," Demps would finally explain, "loves to win, and anytime you get a win in this league you have to be appreciative. It's hard. Teams are good. Players are good. Coaches are good. So anytime you get a win in this league, you've got to celebrate and enjoy that moment. That's what it is."
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