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After rocky exhibitions, Northwestern found some answers
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- After rocky exhibitions, Northwestern found some answers
Two exhibition losses left Northwestern with more questions than answers. After a 94-59 loss to Iowa State, the Wildcats spent the last week trying to fix what went wrong. On Monday night, they showed they made some progress.
NU opened the regular season with an 86-60 win over Binghamton in a game it never trailed. The 'Cats shot 55.8% from the field, including 72% in the first half, and stayed true to the Northwestern way, committing just eight turnovers. This comes just two weeks after the Wildcats committed 20 turnovers against Illinois State and shot 32.8% against Iowa State.
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"We just talked about it; none of those stats matter at the end of the day," Collins said after the game. "I thought our guys came out and had great energy. Thought we played with great confidence."
Collins said postgame that he and his staff had spent the week working out the kinks in the defense and added more offensive sets to help put the ball in the right hands. The results showed that, as the Wildcats got out in transition after stops, kept the ball moving and made it difficult for Binghamton to find good shots. The 'Cats dished out 23 assists in the win and had 18 points off of 12 Bearcat turnovers, and outscored them in transition, 14-2.
"23 assists, eight turnovers," Collins said. "That's Northwestern basketball."
As in the exhibition games, the offense once again ran through sophomore Jake West, who finished just one assist shy of his career-high at 12, while adding 20 points on 6-for-9 shooting and going 6-for-6 from the line. Most of that production came in the first half, when he had 14 points and eight assists, working off of ball screens.
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Collins praised West for how Northwestern had finished last season and carried that into the offseason. Collins said West has grown from the quiet voice he was in his freshman year into one of the team's most vocal leaders, alongside junior Angelo Ciaravino, who make up two-thirds of the returners, along with sophomore Phoenix Gill. Collins compared West's value to the impact quarterback Aidan Chiles has on Northwestern football next door at Ryan Field.
"You guys are seeing it. Our football team, right? When you have a great quarterback, you have a chance, and that's no different than in basketball," Collins said. "When that position is in a good spot, you have poise, you have leadership, and you have a guy making good decisions."
Collins said it was Northwestern's first 20-point, 10-assist game since Bryant McIntosh, the legendary former Wildcats point guard and current assistant coach. West let him hear it in the locker room, joking that McIntosh subbed him out because "he knew how many assists I had."
Of those 12 assists, five went to graduate transfer Jack Karasinski, including four of his seven made threes that night. He finished with a team-high 24 points on 8-for-12 shooting and 7-for-11 from deep, and was the first Wildcat to hit seven threes since Ty Berry did so two years ago.
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"I like to say I have delusional confidence out there," Karasinski said. "Once I touch it, it's going up."
That was prevalent in the game. After airballing a three in the second half, Karasinski showed short-term memory, coming right back down the floor and firing a three from well behind the arc, which fell true on his second attempt.
Graduate transfer LA Pratt showed that too. Pratt had struggled in the two exhibition games, including going 1-for-7 from the field and having five turnovers against Illinois State.
After the misses, Pratt's shot started to fall.
"I kind of saw, let the air out of the balloon and kind of got him going," Collins said.
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Pratt finished the game with 19 points on 6-for-12 shooting, including a big three with time dwindling at the end of the first half, when he pulled up from deep to put Northwestern up 51-35 at the break.
The program also made a shocking announcement just over an hour before tip-off that the Wildcats would be without fourth-year big man Luke McEldon, who is taking a leave of absence from the program for an "indefinite" time. Collins confirmed postgame and declined to share more details out of respect for his privacy. Without McEldon, who started the two exhibition games, junior Okku Federiko took over at center — a position he doesn't typically play — and kept the team afloat in his 23 minutes, finishing plus-20 in that time.
The problems were still there. The second half was less tidy, with the team shooting 41% and going 5-for-18 from deep. Bench production also left much to be desired, with the reserves combining for just six points. Collins said he's trying to figure it all out on the fly.
"We're such a work in progress," Collins said. "I'm learning these guys. We've already made a number of adjustments even since we started playing exhibition games."
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The win gives them a nice confidence boost, but one good night doesn't settle every question raised in October. But just a week after Collins told his team their season would be defined by how they responded, the Wildcats responded well.
They'll look to build on that in the non-conference schedule, when they play host to Stony Brook this Friday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. CST.
