Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Maryland Recap
1/22/2020 3:09:00 PM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUSports.com Special Contributor
That 1994-95 season opened with Duke, coming off a national championship game loss to Arkansas, ranked No. 8 and expected to carry on its grand tradition of success. But on the first day of practice, during a layup drill, its junior guard Chris Collins broke his foot, and mere weeks later its coach Mike Krzyzewski underwent a back operation. Collins would return in mid-December. But Krzyzewski's rehab went poorly, and he was shut down after coaching just 12 games, and he was replaced on the bench by Pete Gaudet, a restricted-earnings coach who was making some $300-a-week.
"History In The Making." That is what Duke entitled the team poster it had put out at this season's start, but now it all just unraveled for the Blue Devils. They got swept by Clemson for the first time since 1977. They blew a 23-point second half lead to Virginia and a 12-point second half lead to North Carolina. They lost four straight at home for the first time in history, dropped its first nine conference games, and eventually finished this season 13-18 overall and 2-14 in the ACC.
"That was probably the only Duke team in the last 30 years that didn't go to the (NCAA) tournament," Collins, now the 'Cat coach, would recall Tuesday evening. "But as hard as it was to go through it, I look back on that time of my life and that was the biggest growth that I ever made."
••••••
Earlier on this Tuesday evening, against No. 17 Maryland at Welsh-Ryan, his young 'Cats had displayed both all of their possibilities and their lingering immaturity. The former was on full view during this one's first half, which the 'Cats dominated with both their offense and defense. They played their zone with alacrity and protected their gaps and limited the penetration of Anthony Cowan, the Terps' quicksilver point. They outscored the Terps by 16 in the paint (18-2), and allowed the Terps just a single two-point field goal, and held the Terps to a mere 26 total points. NU, in turn, shot 60% overall (15-for-25) and 66.7% on its threes (four-of-six), and went to its locker room up a comfortable 14.
"They were locked in on us and we were walking on eggshells," Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. "We were so slow in our movement, and then we were missing some open threes too. It kinda got in our head a little bit. Second half, we changed the way we were playing, changed our mental attitude to the game. We just decided we were going to play up to our abilities. We played smart. We played loose. We played confident. . .(and) our offense got our defense going. At halftime I told our guys, 'We're going to change our season. We're having a good year. But I want to make it a great year.' The guys made a nice step to hopefully get us there."
"Give them credit,'" said Collins. "Second half they found some energy and they were able to start getting to our paint a little more. That was a big area that we wanted to address. They're always driving and kicking. The first half we did a good job of getting in our gaps and still being able to make them take contested shots. Then in the second half Cowan got in the paint a little bit more. . .and some of their guys stepped up and made some big threes."
The Terps, in fact, dropped a three on their first second-half possession, and after less than four minutes their 14-point deficit was cut in half. But here the 'Cats held firm, pushed back, and an A.J. Turner three at 12:25 pushed NU's lead back to 10. "Our guys were ready to play. We were locked in. I thought we would play well and we did," Collins said. "But we still have to get to the point where a team makes a little bit of a run on us, that's where you've got to get really tough. . . . The games are long and there're going to be a lot of runs. You can't expect that they're not going to go on a little bit of a run at some point. When they do, especially at home, you've got to really dig down and you've got to get stops and you've got to find baskets."
Now, as Maryland unfurled a second run, the 'Cats found it difficult to do either, and slowly, inexorably, the Terps eroded their lead. It was down to five at 11:24, to two and 9:35, and now 'Cat point Pat Spencer was blocked down low and the ball found its way to Cowan and he pushed it and dropped a three from the right wing and, for the first time all evening, the Terps had a lead.
Still, once more, the 'Cats held firm, pushed back, and now, down four and with the clock under three, their forward Pete Nance blocked driving Terp Darryl Morsell and the ball found its way to Spencer. But here he drove and he missed and, on the rebound, Nance was called for a foul and Terp forward Jalen Smith walked to the line and dropped both, and this four-point swing left the 'Cats down a half-dozen. "Those little plays, when you're trying to get over the hump, you need those things to go right," Collins said, thinking of this moment. "Those couple of possessions, they got the separation they needed."
"Those," said Spencer, "are daggers."
The dagger, on this night, that would finally gut the 'Cats, who managed just three points in this game's last 3:50 and fell by 11. "There was a lot of frustration tonight," Collins would soon say. "It's a tough one to swallow."
••••••
Back when he was a senior point, current 'Cat assistant director of operations Bryant McIntosh thought back to his freshman season and the 10-game losing streak he then endured. "I never lost my love for the game," he would say of that time. "But I questioned if I was a winner, if I could do it here."
Now, after the latest in a series of eviscerating losses, that quote is shared with Collins and he is asked if he fears that mindset might infect this team.
"That's where I've got to be at my best, my staff and I," he says. "Certainly when you lose, losing takes its toll. These guys, I wish you guys could see. I talk about it a lot. The investment they put in, the hours they put in in terms of practices. But not only that. Taking care of their bodies and the extra stuff, the extra film work, all those things. When you keep coming up short and have heart-breaking losses, that's where the leadership, and particularly me, I've got to make sure that doesn't happen. We've got to keep them upbeat. We've got to keep them fighting. We've got to keep pushing them. And, again, keep talking about that breakthrough. It's coming. I think anybody who's seen us play, we're a different team than we were a month ago. The improvement in our guys across the board has been great to watch. . . . These guys are all kids that are in the early stages of their careers. So it's up to our staff to keep them going, to fight through the adversity."
It was now that this soliloquy flashed back to his junior year at Duke, and here Collins talked of how that miserable season matured him, how it helped him grow. "It forced me to look inside myself as a player and find something, find something," he would say. "Find a toughness, find what I need to come out the next year and to win and to be an all-league player and all those things. That's what our guys need to do. Sometimes you learn your biggest lessons through adversity if you handle it right. You're being tested. Okay. How important is this? Is it okay to keep losing or am I going to push myself even harder to find a way to win?"
Does it help having McIntosh in the locker room, being able to point at McIntosh as an example of perseverance rewarded?
"Sure. Yeah. All the time. I reference that group to add things from the players perspective," Chris Collins finally says. "Sometimes you see the finished product and forget the journey. No one wanted the record to be where it is right now. But I think we all knew coming into this thing, when you looked at our roster, that it was a group that was going to need to be developed and was going to need to learn how to win. It's just disappointing. I feel like we should have more wins than we have. That's the hard part. That's the frustrating part. I feel we've played well enough to win a couple more of these league games and it just hasn't happened for us."
POSTSCRIPT: In that disastrous 1994-95 season at Duke, Collins, coming off his injury, averaged just 3.9 ppg., while shooting 29.8% overall and 23.3% on his threes. A season later, his senior season, the Blue Devils finished 18-13 overall and 8-8 in the ACC and Collins averaged 16.3 ppg., while shooting 46.7% overall and 44.1% on his threes. He, then, knows all about handling adversity the right way, and learning from it as well.
NUSports.com Special Contributor
That 1994-95 season opened with Duke, coming off a national championship game loss to Arkansas, ranked No. 8 and expected to carry on its grand tradition of success. But on the first day of practice, during a layup drill, its junior guard Chris Collins broke his foot, and mere weeks later its coach Mike Krzyzewski underwent a back operation. Collins would return in mid-December. But Krzyzewski's rehab went poorly, and he was shut down after coaching just 12 games, and he was replaced on the bench by Pete Gaudet, a restricted-earnings coach who was making some $300-a-week.
"History In The Making." That is what Duke entitled the team poster it had put out at this season's start, but now it all just unraveled for the Blue Devils. They got swept by Clemson for the first time since 1977. They blew a 23-point second half lead to Virginia and a 12-point second half lead to North Carolina. They lost four straight at home for the first time in history, dropped its first nine conference games, and eventually finished this season 13-18 overall and 2-14 in the ACC.
"That was probably the only Duke team in the last 30 years that didn't go to the (NCAA) tournament," Collins, now the 'Cat coach, would recall Tuesday evening. "But as hard as it was to go through it, I look back on that time of my life and that was the biggest growth that I ever made."
••••••
Earlier on this Tuesday evening, against No. 17 Maryland at Welsh-Ryan, his young 'Cats had displayed both all of their possibilities and their lingering immaturity. The former was on full view during this one's first half, which the 'Cats dominated with both their offense and defense. They played their zone with alacrity and protected their gaps and limited the penetration of Anthony Cowan, the Terps' quicksilver point. They outscored the Terps by 16 in the paint (18-2), and allowed the Terps just a single two-point field goal, and held the Terps to a mere 26 total points. NU, in turn, shot 60% overall (15-for-25) and 66.7% on its threes (four-of-six), and went to its locker room up a comfortable 14.
"They were locked in on us and we were walking on eggshells," Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. "We were so slow in our movement, and then we were missing some open threes too. It kinda got in our head a little bit. Second half, we changed the way we were playing, changed our mental attitude to the game. We just decided we were going to play up to our abilities. We played smart. We played loose. We played confident. . .(and) our offense got our defense going. At halftime I told our guys, 'We're going to change our season. We're having a good year. But I want to make it a great year.' The guys made a nice step to hopefully get us there."
"Give them credit,'" said Collins. "Second half they found some energy and they were able to start getting to our paint a little more. That was a big area that we wanted to address. They're always driving and kicking. The first half we did a good job of getting in our gaps and still being able to make them take contested shots. Then in the second half Cowan got in the paint a little bit more. . .and some of their guys stepped up and made some big threes."
The Terps, in fact, dropped a three on their first second-half possession, and after less than four minutes their 14-point deficit was cut in half. But here the 'Cats held firm, pushed back, and an A.J. Turner three at 12:25 pushed NU's lead back to 10. "Our guys were ready to play. We were locked in. I thought we would play well and we did," Collins said. "But we still have to get to the point where a team makes a little bit of a run on us, that's where you've got to get really tough. . . . The games are long and there're going to be a lot of runs. You can't expect that they're not going to go on a little bit of a run at some point. When they do, especially at home, you've got to really dig down and you've got to get stops and you've got to find baskets."
Now, as Maryland unfurled a second run, the 'Cats found it difficult to do either, and slowly, inexorably, the Terps eroded their lead. It was down to five at 11:24, to two and 9:35, and now 'Cat point Pat Spencer was blocked down low and the ball found its way to Cowan and he pushed it and dropped a three from the right wing and, for the first time all evening, the Terps had a lead.
Still, once more, the 'Cats held firm, pushed back, and now, down four and with the clock under three, their forward Pete Nance blocked driving Terp Darryl Morsell and the ball found its way to Spencer. But here he drove and he missed and, on the rebound, Nance was called for a foul and Terp forward Jalen Smith walked to the line and dropped both, and this four-point swing left the 'Cats down a half-dozen. "Those little plays, when you're trying to get over the hump, you need those things to go right," Collins said, thinking of this moment. "Those couple of possessions, they got the separation they needed."
"Those," said Spencer, "are daggers."
The dagger, on this night, that would finally gut the 'Cats, who managed just three points in this game's last 3:50 and fell by 11. "There was a lot of frustration tonight," Collins would soon say. "It's a tough one to swallow."
••••••
Back when he was a senior point, current 'Cat assistant director of operations Bryant McIntosh thought back to his freshman season and the 10-game losing streak he then endured. "I never lost my love for the game," he would say of that time. "But I questioned if I was a winner, if I could do it here."
Now, after the latest in a series of eviscerating losses, that quote is shared with Collins and he is asked if he fears that mindset might infect this team.
"That's where I've got to be at my best, my staff and I," he says. "Certainly when you lose, losing takes its toll. These guys, I wish you guys could see. I talk about it a lot. The investment they put in, the hours they put in in terms of practices. But not only that. Taking care of their bodies and the extra stuff, the extra film work, all those things. When you keep coming up short and have heart-breaking losses, that's where the leadership, and particularly me, I've got to make sure that doesn't happen. We've got to keep them upbeat. We've got to keep them fighting. We've got to keep pushing them. And, again, keep talking about that breakthrough. It's coming. I think anybody who's seen us play, we're a different team than we were a month ago. The improvement in our guys across the board has been great to watch. . . . These guys are all kids that are in the early stages of their careers. So it's up to our staff to keep them going, to fight through the adversity."
It was now that this soliloquy flashed back to his junior year at Duke, and here Collins talked of how that miserable season matured him, how it helped him grow. "It forced me to look inside myself as a player and find something, find something," he would say. "Find a toughness, find what I need to come out the next year and to win and to be an all-league player and all those things. That's what our guys need to do. Sometimes you learn your biggest lessons through adversity if you handle it right. You're being tested. Okay. How important is this? Is it okay to keep losing or am I going to push myself even harder to find a way to win?"
Does it help having McIntosh in the locker room, being able to point at McIntosh as an example of perseverance rewarded?
"Sure. Yeah. All the time. I reference that group to add things from the players perspective," Chris Collins finally says. "Sometimes you see the finished product and forget the journey. No one wanted the record to be where it is right now. But I think we all knew coming into this thing, when you looked at our roster, that it was a group that was going to need to be developed and was going to need to learn how to win. It's just disappointing. I feel like we should have more wins than we have. That's the hard part. That's the frustrating part. I feel we've played well enough to win a couple more of these league games and it just hasn't happened for us."
POSTSCRIPT: In that disastrous 1994-95 season at Duke, Collins, coming off his injury, averaged just 3.9 ppg., while shooting 29.8% overall and 23.3% on his threes. A season later, his senior season, the Blue Devils finished 18-13 overall and 8-8 in the ACC and Collins averaged 16.3 ppg., while shooting 46.7% overall and 44.1% on his threes. He, then, knows all about handling adversity the right way, and learning from it as well.
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