The ‘Cats tournament hopes lay buried on the West Coast, but there are some positive takeaways from the trip to the PNW.
The ‘Cats dropped a pair of close games in the Pacific Northwest in the last week. After learning Jalen Leach would be out for the season with an ACL injury, a shorthanded Northwestern traveled to Washington and Oregon and fought hard but ultimately couldn’t overcome personnel shortages (including Chris Collins in the first game).
However, there were two positive takeaways in the form of Jordan Clayton and K.J. Windham. Clayton, in a remarkably selfless move, burned his redshirt season and elected to play out the final eight games of the regular season and whatever lies in Northwestern’s postseason future. He started both games. Meanwhile, Windham broke out of a deep shooting slump to the tune of a 20-point outburst in Eugene.
Instead of the usual format today, I’ve elected to do one section on Clayton and one section on Windham, plus the usual Chris Collins clip at the end. As a warning, this column will be more clip-heavy than usual as a product of what I decided to cut for this week.
Jordan Clayton
It has to be said, first and foremost, that Clayton deserves all the recognition he gets and more for his decision. When it was announced he was redshirting this season, the general belief was that he’d be transferring after the season. Considering his underwhelming rookie season, Windham jumping him in the pecking order this year and the incoming recruiting class, it would’ve made sense had Clayton decided to put his name in the portal.
Instead, Clayton stepped up for his teammates and earned the starting nod in his season debut. And, quietly, it was a seriously impressive debut. The sophomore tallied seven points, five assists and no turnovers. He looked poised and under control without being afraid to shoot, unlike last year.
Here’s an impressive play. Clayton initiates the action with a duck-in to Martinelli. When Martinelli backs out, Clayton probably should have cut. He instead floats back near half court, usually an unwise move because it draws an easy double team to Martinelli while Clayton isn’t in a position to score. However, when that double comes, Clayton makes a heady play to cut downhill. Martinelli tosses the ball to the cutting Clayton. Instead of taking a tough, contested layup or an off-balance floater, he calmly draws the help defense and tosses the pass over top for an alley-oop to Nicholson. The essence of being a young guard in the Big Ten is contained in this play, and it’s a promising one for Clayton’s development, whether he ends up at Northwestern or elsewhere in future years.
This is where I think Clayton really shined in both games. He finished with 13 points on the trip on 5-of-14 shooting but really thrived in the midrange. He’s not a great three point shooter yet, but his pull-up game is strong and a legitimate scoring threat.
His initial pass to Nicholson isn’t great, but everything after that is pretty. Clayton fades towards the corner but then sees that Nicholson needs help and goes to take the ball from his big man. After that, it’s a simple pick and roll that Clayton reads well. Nicholson switches the screen side and Clayton does a good job setting up Shelstad with a rip through before curling tightly around Nicholson’s screen. Bittle is in drop coverage and Shelstad chases over the top, so Clayton confidently gets into a 15-footer and calmly knocks it down.
Unfortunately, Clayton has a long way to go. This just simply cannot happen, especially on the possession following the shot above. Shelstad is a very good player, but Clayton cannot get beat off a straight line drive, especially with no interior help. He has to recognize that Nicholson got pulled out by Bittle’s action and give a little more cushion to Shelstad, even if that means allowing a three.
K.J. Windham
Windham hit four threes on seven attempts Tuesday, snapping out of a slump that saw him shoot 1-of-7 from three in the six games prior. He also hit a number of tough running twos, which we’ll look at first.
This is a very simple set designed to get Windham downhill. With Supreme Cook in the game at center, Oregon was playing a deep drop coverage, so Collins knew there would be opportunities to get his guards some momentum. In this case, a simple stagger screen gets Shelstad caught up in the mix. With no risk of a hedge or trap, Windham puts his head down and gets towards the rim. Shelstad is late in recovering and Windham draws an extra free throw, albeit an eventual miss.
This is why I think Windham thrived in this game and what I’d like to see going forward. Collins simplified the game tremendously for the young point guard. I’m sure you picked this up on your own, but this is the exact same set, one minute after the last clip. By making it easy on his first year point guard, Collins takes away the difficult decision-making and complex part of playing basketball and frees up Windham to just go out and score. A lot of times, young players hit a wall when they get stuck thinking too much and worrying about mistakes. Windham and fellow first year Angelo Ciaravino have both fallen victim to that this season, as well as the aforementioned Clayton last year. However, Windham may be breaking out of that mindset.
Since Windham scored the most points by a freshman since Boo Buie half a decade ago, I figured I wouldn’t stop at just two offensive highlights. The first two clips exemplified his on-ball scoring ability. This time, it’s his work off the ball that earns him a bucket. Windham’s initial pass to Nicholson is slightly off the mark, which is unfortunate because Mullins was WIDE open on the shallow cut into a backdoor cut. Instead, Windham drifts past a Martinelli flare screen that keeps Shelstad from closing too quickly and nails a three. This is a deceptively difficult shot and Windham confidently knocks it down.
Wouldn’t you know it, another repeat action! Copy everything I said above about keeping it simple for Windham and paste it here. Shelstad does a better job evading the screen here, but still leaves enough room for Windham to catch and fire. It’s imperative to translate this success into the long term for Windham and it starts with keeping it simple.
Coach Collins Clip of the Week
Note: The clip had to be split into two separate videos because the original one was too big.
I think we all knew what was coming, didn’t we? Collins finally got himself ejected, something that’s becoming an annual tradition at this point. Honestly, this is pretty mild from a Collins standpoint and mostly due to referee Jeffrey Anderson’s short temper. Collins doesn’t show his typical emotion until after getting his second technical. At that point, Collins has to be restrained from getting in Anderson’s face while the latter explains the double tech to the official scorebook. The most entertaining part of this whole interaction (to me at least) takes place at the 37-second mark, where Collins acts like he’s going to walk away before pivoting back and creating an open lane between himself and Anderson. Instead of capitalizing on it, he waits until Anderson disengages from the scorer’s table to exchange a few last words with the ref. Then, with head held high, Collins struts off down the tunnel to the jeers of Washington fans. All in all, a pretty calm first ejection of the season for Collins.