NU dealt themselves a serious blow to their own NCAA Tournament hopes tonight. They were right on the cusp, that “last 4 in” line, but probably not so much anymore. Granted they still need four teams to play their way above them, but Championship week is long and those types of things develop quite quickly.
“Hopefully I won’t be disappointed on Sunday. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. We’ll be playing next week, and we like to compete no matter who we’re playing against,” John Shurna said after the game.
Northwestern is a different looking team with JerShon Cobb (but it still wasn’t enough).
The sophomore from Decatur (“where they pack heat, and rob neighbors” as the urban poet Ludacris famously said), Georgia is clearly healthy now. He is back to being himself; and more. In a 75-68 OT Big Ten Tournament quarterfinal loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers Cobb had a career high 24 points on 8-11 shooting.
He also added 8 rebounds and played fantastic defense in the 1-3-1 zone.
Andre Hollins had a career high 25 points for Minnesota on 10-16 from the floors. The Gophers were hurt by the loss of Ralph Sampson III, but did benefit from the return of Julian Welch. The Gophers RPI is 90, NU is 47. In this tournament, Minnesota was a #10 seed, Northwestern a #7. If you can’t take care of business when logic and reason hold you’re supposed to, then do you do deserve to go to the NCAA Tournament?
“It’s a body of work,” Northwestern Coach Bill Carmody said after the game
And a few years ago, they said the last 10 games used to be something that if you were on a hot streak, that was more important than playing December games, but now they say it’s not true
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