It was a demoralizing week for Northwestern basketball.
First, the Wildcats hosted a bad Washington Huskies team as 1.5-point favorites and got beaten handily, falling by 14 on their home floor. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, the team bussed down to Champaign with a 2-9 Big Ten record and departed with a 10th Big Ten loss, this one by forty points. The ‘Cats were down 47-19 at half and would finish with a mere 44, while the Illini piled on with an 84-point showing that featured five different Illinois players scoring in double figures.
The season has been over for weeks with regard to legitimate postseason aspirations, but this is the first week where it feels like Northwestern has accepted that. The effort level was awful against Washington, and the ‘Cats were very quickly demoralized when Illinois hit some big-time early shots. At this point, there is a legitimate chance they don’t win another game the rest of the season.
Offense
In all honesty, I was scratching my head when deciding what to write about in the offense section this week. The ‘Cats were allergic to scoring the basketball in both games this week, but I decided to go with a sequence in the Washington game since the defense section features two clips from Illinois.
NU trailed by 12 at the commencement of the second half, down but not out. The Wildcats’ one strength this season has been not turning the ball over, as they average a nation-best 8.2 turnovers per game. So, of course, they turned it over three times in the first two minutes of the second half against Washington, burying any shot at a spark to open the second half.
The first of the three turnovers was the worst. Max Green tried to drive on Bryson Tucker and just simply knees it as he runs. He recovers before it goes out of bounds but is forced to throw a wobbly pass cross-court, which is intercepted with ease. This is a fully unforced error as a result of Green being unfocused combined with a bit of bad luck.
A rare mistake by Nick Martinelli. He’s typically so strong with the ball, but here, he allows Hannes Steinbach to poke it away from him without much effort or strength. Instead of attacking squared up, Martinelli should have had his back towards Steinbach and gone up over his right shoulder with a flipper off his left hand. Not only is that his preferred move rather than trying to score over top of a shot blocker in Franck Kepnang, it would have shielded off Steinbach from getting a piece of the ball and forcing a turnover.
The offense plays this entire possession at a standstill. There’s exactly one real screen set and zero off-ball movement other than Jake West curling around said screen. The ball sticks in hands, there’s no crisp or quick passing and nobody even thinks about taking it to the rim until Martinelli does, where he is promptly swallowed up by Kepnang. The best look on this possession was probably West curling off a down screen into a catch-and-shoot three, but he doesn’t even think about taking the shot despite having space.
Martinelli isn’t at fault here. He is forced to go one-on-one with help behind, which isn’t his game when starting out on the perimeter. A team with this little movement and effort immediately out of halftime with fresh legs is a clear signal of a lack of will and care in the results.
Defense
The defense was also excruciatingly bad in both games, but it was at least bad in interesting ways against Illinois.
Northwestern came into this game with a clear game plan: take the ball out of Keaton Wagler’s hands no matter the cost. The Illinois star freshman has been on fire lately, and Wildcat coach Chris Collins was not interested in seeing his team be the most recent victim of Wagler’s quest to go from outside the top-200 in his recruiting class to a lottery pick.
Every time Illinois brought a ball screen for Wagler (at least for most of the first half), Northwestern blitzed the screen, which essentially means they doubled Wagler with the intent to force him as far away from the basket as possible. It was successful for the first few minutes, including on the very first possession of the game.
Wagler looks somewhat confused and retreats before firing a cross-court pass to Andrej Stojaković. He also gets doubled when a ball screen comes, which neutralizes his considerable driving threat. Finally, Wagler is able to make a tough drive inside as the shot clock is winding down, and Tre Singleton is in great position to swallow him up.
The scheme was creative to start from the coaching staff, but it didn’t take long for Illinois coach Brad Underwood to figure out the counter. Underwood told his bigs to go pretend to set a screen and then slip into a short roll. Both Ivisics (Ivisices?) and David Mirković can pass well on the move, and Ben Humrichous and Mirkovic could not miss in the first half. Northwestern led 7-5 in this game and then trailed 30-9 seven and a half minutes later.
In this clip, Zvonimir Ivisic acts like he’s going to set a screen and then turns around and cuts down the left lane line. Arrinten Page, as he tends to do, gets overzealous about the blitz and gets too far up the floor, leaving Ivisic open for a lob behind him. Jordan Clayton steps into help but gets sucked too deep into the paint, leaving Humrichous wide open on the wing.
Chris Collins is a good coach (despite what some people are saying based on this season) but he was out-coached by Underwood in the blowout, a fact he admitted in the postgame press conference. Whatever he tried on both sides of the ball, Underwood had an answer for.
Coach Collins Clip of the Week
Finally, Collins picks up a tech. Late in the loss to Washington, Collins appears to take offense at something Zoom Diallo says, confronting him after Northwestern called a timeout. It’s difficult to tell what Collins says, and impossible to tell what Diallo retorts, but the end result is both player and coach earning offsetting technical fouls.
For the Northwestern players, this comes off as pretty embarrassing. Your coach should not be the most outspoken person and the first to confront a player who is jawing at the bench. The guys playing the game have to take more pride than they did this week, or else the program is going to continually fall further and further from dignity.
