Northwestern is either wonderfully maddening or maddeningly wonderful. And if anyone can tell me the difference, that would be great.
The Wildcats want to be more than a team that gives it the old college try. They don’t want to be patted on the heads and told that, given their school’s woebegone basketball history, they’ve exceeded expectations.
They want to go to the NCAA tournament.
More Top Picks Fitness Tracker
That’s all well and good, but when they needed to do something about it Sunday at Ohio State, they lost 52-47. That’s how it has been all season for the Cats. They get within a few tantalizing feet of their goal only to have a leg fall asleep.
“It’s especially hard when you see some of the games that we’ve played so well in — [winning] on the road at Michigan State, winning at Purdue, beating Minnesota,” NU’s Kevin Coble said. “You see those glimpses of what an incredible team this is.”
But you see them blow a big lead in a loss to Purdue at home, fall apart at the end in a loss a home to Illinois and get blown out at Minnesota, you can’t help but notice you’ve torn your hair out.
Barring a trip to the Big Ten tournament championship game (and perhaps a title), this team has National Invitation Tournament written all over it. Nice, but hardly satisfying. The Cats have been so close to being the first Northwestern team to make the NCAA tournament. A victory Sunday would have made them 9-9 in the Big Ten. Instead, they finished the regular season 8-10. Big difference.
Coming in, Northwestern knew that if it beat Ohio State, everything else in life would be so much easier. In the first half, the Cats shot 26.1 percent and had nine turnovers. The halftime score was 25-15. It was like watching a car crash at 5 m.p.h. You hoped the air bags would deploy just to liven things up.
The Wildcats struggled to handle the Buckeyes’ half-court pressure, finally figured it out like good Northwestern students should and made a game of it.
In true 2008-09 NU fashion, the Cats came barreling back, hitting three-pointer after three-pointer to rally from a 15-point deficit in the first half to a 45-43 lead with 3 minutes 38 seconds left on Michael Thompson’s double-clutch, banked three-pointer with the shot clock expiring, plus his ensuing free throw. Craig Moore, who wouldn’t have been able to find the basket with a metal detector in the first half, hit four three-pointers after halftime.
This team has all kinds of heart. It never gives up.
But it doesn’t know how to finish games. It appears to be a fatal flaw. On Sunday, the Wildcats didn’t have anyone to match up with 7-foot freshman B.J. Mullens, and they didn’t know how to stop Evan Turner, the former St. Joseph High School star. They aren’t the first team that hasn’t known how to stop Turner, and they won’t be the last.
How many victories do the Cats need in the Big Ten tournament to have a legitimate shot at an NCAA bid?
“Two?” Coble said. “Make a good showing. I think that puts us in the middle of the discussion again.”
That would mean victories over Minnesota on Thursday and against No. 1-seed Michigan State on Friday. That won’t be enough. It likely will take advancing to the championship game to give them a chance at an NCAA tournament bid. If that sounds difficult, it’s because it is.
The Cats had reason to believe coming in. They’ve been through a lot this season. What went up tended to come down. But they always seemed to bounce back.
There was so much to gain and so much to lose Sunday. And you could see it in their eyes afterward.
“It’s rough,” coach Bill Carmody said. “I really liked the way the guys came back. You need some good fortune — Thompson throwing in that banker at the clock. … Things weren’t going their way, but they figured out a way right down to the last play.”
Teams know they’ve been in a game after they’ve played the Wildcats.
“I don’t know what Northwestern’s fate is going to be,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. “I would love for those guys to get in. I’d love that for their program and for Bill, but it would be scary if you had to play them.”
He’s right. If Northwestern plays the way it’s capable of playing and — this is a big if — plays well from start to finish, it has a chance. But it’s asking a lot of a team whose main characteristic is inconsistency to finally become consistent. Probably too much.
———–
Ohio St. 52, NU 47
More Top Picks Best Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Samsung Galaxy Deals 2026 Sale
Slow start dooms Wildcats, possibly their NCAA hopes. Plus Big Ten tournament bracket, PAGE 3