In Northwestern’s worst week of the season thus far, it was the veterans who struggled the most and the young guys who provided a spark of hope.
Northwestern fell to 10-5 this week and just 1-3 in Big Ten play after disappointing road trips to State College and West Lafayette. The Wildcats need to right the ship and have a week to do prepare before a home stretch.
The two games saw the ‘Cats mess with their rotation a bit. In Thursday’s tilt against Penn State, first years K.J. Windham and Angelo Ciaravino earned meaningful minutes for the first time since the loss to Butler on Thanksgiving. On Sunday, their usage was magnified as grad students Ty Berry and Jalen Leach were glued to the bench for the majority of the second half of a blowout at the hands of the Boilermakers. Additionally, Matt Nicholson found himself out of favor down the stretch while Keenan Fitzmorris took over Big Matt’s part of the timeshare with Luke Hunger.
While Sunday’s changes may have just been to send a message to the team, let’s look at the film and find out some of the on court reasons why the playing time shifted so radically this week.
Defense
Let’s start with the good, which was more fleeting than the bad this week.
This is how a Chris Collins defense is meant to be played. Everyone is working in tandem and switching on a string, with strong verbal and nonverbal communication throughout.
Start at the point of attack, where Ciaravino navigates through one screen (because Nicholson doesn’t switch) and then passes off his man to Martinelli since he is supposed to switch that one. When the ball cycles around to Kern, who is guarded by Ciaravino again, the action truly starts.
On the weak side, Martinelli and Berry switch. Meanwhile, Ciaravino evades a Niederhauser screen while Nicholson executes a perfect hard hedge to push Nick Kern backwards and throw off his timing. By the time he recovers, Ciaravino is in front of him again. Meanwhile, Martinelli lets Ace Baldwin cut in front of his face (a big no-no), but Berry is aware enough to step into the lane and contact Baldwin to throw off his cut and prevent him from receiving a pass. At the same time, Windham dives to tag the Niederhauser roll and not give up an easy dunk to the big man. When the pass goes cross court to Puff Johnson, Windham closes out hard but gets his feet set to prepare for the drive. Berry follows Baldwin but positions himself in a place to smother a Johnson crossover or spin, and Nicholson is positioned much the same way. That leaves Johnson with no choice but to put his head down and drive on the baseline. Windham reads that and gets in legal guarding position before drawing the offensive foul.
On the other hand, let’s look at a pretty bad defensive play by Matt Nicholson. Usually, the seven-footer is a dependable defender and earns his minutes holding down the paint. But on Sunday, he looked completely overmatched by Purdue and specifically Trey Kaufmann-Renn.
This is a very simple wing pick-and-short-roll into the mid-post area between Purdue’s two stars. Nicholson is instructed to hard hedge on most center screens, and this time the Boilermakers use it against him. Kaufman-Renn slips the screen and Braden Smith bounces it to him while Nicholson is floating in no-man’s land. Berry actually does a pretty good job to contest the bigger TKR without fouling. But Nicholson, upon making his defensive error, doesn’t recover and box out Kaufman-Renn, instead just gliding down near the rim. The floater comes up short and ricochets right back to Kaufman-Renn who puts it back up and in. Had Nicholson defended the screen better, TKR never would have gotten such a good look. And even after messing up his coverage, a recovery to box out Kaufman-Renn would’ve yielded a much needed stop but Purdue stretched its lead to eight instead.
Offense
Offense was a struggle for the entire first frame of the Purdue game as the ‘Cats recorded a season-low 18 first half points. Part of the issue was missing open looks, but some of the shots Northwestern was taking were suspect. Among those was Berry, who had just three points across 27 minutes over the last two games after exploding for 23 against Northeastern.
This clip says so much about how much Berry is struggling and why he is forcing looks that aren’t usually part of his game. When the grad student is at his best, he is flying around screens, floating to the weakside corner to receive kickout passes and occasionally slicing backdoor for a layup. Rarely does he take midrange jumpers, and most of those are off some sort of pindown/curl action at the elbow. Here, he grabs a rebound and goes coast to coast without even thinking about a pass before pulling up for a long, contested two just inside the free throw line. Those kinds of shots are not what Berry excels at and not what this offense is built to do. The shooting guard has only earned 13 and 14 minutes respectively in the past two contests, in large part due to wasted offensive possessions like these.
However, there’s a player on the roster at the pre-pubescent stages of his development who is clearly the more useful offensive piece at this point. Angelo Ciaravino set a career high with 19 points on Sunday and was a missed free throw down the stretch away from 20.
In the past two games, Ciaravino has hit 5-of-11 three pointers. However, it has been his slashing ability and finishing at the rim that pop the most. In a game where even Brooks Barnhizer and Nick Martinelli consistently failed to get good looks inside, Ciaravino converted 5-of-7 two pointers. Watch Ciaravino in this clip,. He floats up and down the three point line, following the ball as it works its way around the other side. When Hunger feeds him, he makes a split second decision to pass up a mediocre look and drive middle. Ciaravino is taking on the stronger and longer Kaufman-Renn but still manages to use his shoulder and nudge TKR just enough to get the hook shot up and in. Throughout the Purdue game (at least on the offensive end), Ciaravino made confident, consistent, correct decisions befitting of a much older and more experienced player. His continued development will pay major dividends for Northwestern in the near and far future.
Coach Collins Clip of the Week
Surprisingly, Collins was pretty reserved (at least to the cameras) during the end of the Penn State game where most would agree he had a right to be angry. The refereeing during that contest was purely atrocious (a fact noted by a number of neutral X personalities including famed CBS reporter Jon Rothstein). At the end of the game, an inadvertent whistle wiped away the game-tying basket before a no-call on a two handed shove ended the ‘Cats chances. However, the best clip from that game came late in the first half.
The video skips so it’s hard to tell why, but watch Collins at the top of the screen. Ciaravino picks up a cheap reach-in foul and Collins loses his marbles. He starts screaming at the first year for making a rookie mistake and picking up a dumb foul while his squad was already in foul trouble and the Nittany Lions were in the double bonus. Although they don’t zoom in to his face, you can see from the game cam that he is heated. The angry air-punch and his voice heard over the din drives his point home.