Obviously, Northwestern basketball has taken a step back in year two of the Chris Collins regime. Their 1-10 conference record; as well as a couple of the recent blow-outs attest to this. Last night was especially harsh, as “mop up time” actually commenced before the half.
It was a football like 38-14 at halftime, and it was 55-21 when the under 12 timeout approached. The wide margin between the two teams was very astounding when you consider how just a couple weeks ago the two finished regulation tied in East Lansing.
Last night’s “true rout” as Sir Ian Darke would say, is not truly indicative of how this Northwestern basketball season has gone; or where the program currently is in general.
“Very disappointing night,” Northwestern basketball coach Chris Collins said.
“Tonight hasn’t been indicative of how we’ve played in terms of effort and fight and competitiveness. I don’t know what it was, I can’t explain it. We haven’t had our normal fight that we usually have and that’s concerning.”
The operative word there is fight. It’s all you can do at this point- keep fighting. And it applies to everyone involved in the Northwestern basketball program.
Just “fight and fight, fight and fight and fight…fight, fight, fight” (like the theme song to Itchy and Scratchy).
Collins said the word “fight” in some form 15 times during his approximately 14 minute postgame press conference yesterday. Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo said not to judge Northwestern basketball based on this game. He said that State had their best half of basketball all season and NU had their worst.
“He needs to start winning some of these,” Izzo continued.
“When you start winning you usually get better than you are. When you start losing you get worse than you are.”
Rebuilding NU is going to take time. We all knew it was going to take time. During an earlier stretch, from January 11th to January 25th, Northwestern basketball lost five games that they easily could have won. That 1-10 record could easily be 4-7 or 5-6 right now.
“For the first time tonight, I saw some guys with their head down a little bit, and looked defeated,” said Collins.
This is the first time he’s noticed it and he reiterated that the onus is on him:
“That’s on me to get the guys reenergized for this stretch run.”
“The one thing I’ve been really proud of, and I’ve said this all along, is in all those close losses we kept getting off the mat, we kept fighting, but sooner or later, you have to be rewarded.”
“They had more energy than us the whole game,” said NU freshman forward Vic Law of Michigan State.
It’s important that Northwestern basketball keeps getting off the mat. After every single beat down they need to keep coming back and try to find some fight.
Fight, fight, fight. Fight, fight, fight.
I discussed the New NUera of Northwestern basketball, as well as the state of the Big Ten on The Weekend Sports Report with Packer Dave and Steve Leventhal. You can listen here. I come on around the 24:30 mark.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive.
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