Northwestern University Athletics
Iowa Primer
3/6/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
A potpourri as the `Cats head to Iowa City for a Saturday rematch with the Hawkeyes.
THE `CATS losing streak was 10 as they faced their Feb.15 date with the Hawkeyes at Welsh-Ryan, and that was not the worst of the news. In their latest defeat, at home to Michigan State, they had appeared battered and beaten and woebegone as they meekly fell by 24. That alarmed Chris Collins and, when he met with his staff later that evening, he realized a harsh truth that no coach wants to confront. He realized he was close to losing his team. "Instincts. Gut feel," he said Thursday when asked how he reached that conclusion.
"That Michigan State game, during that game I felt Michigan State jumped on us and we just kind of laid down. Going in the locker room, looking in our players' eyes, it was just my instincts, that we were on the edge of losing `em. We were right at that moment. My instincts told me we had to do something. So we hung out here all night. I didn't know what the answer was. But my instincts told me we couldn't keep doing the same thing because we were going to lose `em.
"That's when we decided to make big changes with how we practice, how we prepare, our defense (the `Cats switched to a zone). The only reason we did that is we knew we had to do something different. Not that what we were doing before wasn't a good way. It was. It's just, the pattern we were going down and the results we were getting, we had to change. Then to win (that Iowa game), that's the ultimate (change). Had we then lost that game, we might have lost `em. That's how fragile it was. Fortunately, we won."
Tre Demps was asked about that realization of Collins. "It was a tough time," the junior guard said. "We were young. We're still young. But we were young, there was a little bit of disconnect. We'd lost a lot of games in a row, so that player-coach relationship was altered a little bit. But the coaches did a great job of getting us through that time and we kind of changed the format of things a little bit. That fresh start helped bring some energy."
THE `CATS energy was palpable on that Sunday afternoon they faced the Hawkeyes at Welsh-Ryan and, with under 10 seconds remaining, they were up by three. But then, with just 2.4 seconds left, Iowa's Jarrod Uthoff dropped an improbable, off-balance three to tie the game up and send it careening into overtime. "It was," Demps would later say of that shot, "like a knife to my heart."
The `Cats, during their losing streak, had suffered a series of close defeats, and here is what often happens to a team burdened by that knowledge. When it is again in a tight affair, it does not think about how it is going to win it. It instead thinks about how it is going to blow this one. "Initially, they had that look," Collins will say, thinking back to the team huddle before that overtime began.
"If you ask the guys, I can remember saying for about a minute straight, `We're going to win.' Like 15 times in a row. Because, initially, that was the look. Like, `Oh, oh. Here we go again.' The more I kept saying it, I think they got annoyed by it. But it was kind of sinking in, `You're right.' But initially it was a look of here-we-go-again. That's why, in that huddle, I just remember myself saying over and over, `We're gonna win. We are going to win.' I just kept saying it, for like a minute, and finally they started repeating me. I don't know if that helped or anything. But that was kind of that moment of truth that we needed to get over the hump."
Was his approach here different from, say, the Maryland game, where the `Cats fell by one after leading by 11 with just 3:46 remaining?
"Maybe," admits Collins. "That was more talking strategy. In hindsight, maybe I needed to be a little bit more reassuring with those guys. You always critique yourself more than anything. `How can I help them better?' One of the things I felt, if we got in those situations again, I've got to give them more confidence, not just talk strategy. Give them that belief that we can win it. That's what I wanted to do differently and I started with the Iowa game and it helped."
THE `CATS were transformed after they toppled the Hawkeyes in overtime that afternoon, and enter their rematch having won five of their last six. That is how salutary even a single victory can be. "Every team has talent," Demps will explain. "But sometimes you suppress that talent from being down. But after you win a game, it's like a push start, it's like a catalyst, and you just keep building and building."
THEY HAVE BUILT their record to 15-15 and so are unlike those many teams out there that can't wait for their seasons to end. "Absolutely not," avows Demps. "Absolutely not. We still feel we have a lot to play for. Obviously, we're fighting to be a post-season team. If we win a couple more, we're looking at possibly playing in the NIT. Then if you win a couple games in the NIT, you do something no team here has ever done. So we still feel we have a lot to play for."
THAT NIGHT after the Michigan State game, as he sat in his office with his staff, what would he have thought if someone had then told Collins his team would win five-of-its-next-six? "I don't know if I would have believed `em. And I'm a confident guy," he says. "It just shows you the power of how you can turn things around, and also the power of confidence. After we won that first game, it kind of opened up a whole new world for our guys."
AND FINALLY, on a lighter note: Back in the early `80s Collins was a ball boy for Penn, where his father Doug was a volunteer assistant. At each of its home games at The Palestra, a wonderful place known as the Cathedral of College Basketball, its students would celebrate the first Quaker basket of the night by festooning the court with streamers. Collins and the other ball boys then dashed out to clean the mess up and, as they did, they were gently ribbed. "All the players would be like, `Would you clean the trash up so we can get back to playing?'" he remembers. "So me and a handful of other kids would be out there trying to get the streamers off the court."
Turns out that one of those players was Penn's senior guard and captain, current Iowa coach Fran McCaffery. "That's when I first got to know him," Collins goes on. "He was really close with my dad. They used to work out together in the summers. My dad (when he was a star for the `76ers) was injured a lot, so they were rehabbing together and became really good friends. I was just a kid, but because of our allegiance he actually tried to recruit me when he was an assistant at Notre Dame. I've just known him (a long time). He was at UNC-Greensboro when I was at Duke, which was right up the road, so I would always see him. We've been friends for a long time because of that."
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