Now, we wait
at this point i would be shocked if Northwestern gets a home NIT game. forget about the fact that there are probably 16 bubble teams ahead of them. a simple look at the attendance numbers will encourage that committee to send the Wildcats on the road. given the travel considerations, i wouldn't be surprised if they end up in South Bend. i'm sure Luke Harangody is salivating at game tapes of Kyle Rowley.
but we'll worry about that later. for now here are my observations from today's loss.
at the beginning of NU's second-half run to get back in it, there was a timeout about 5 minutes into the second half. according to the delightful Charissa Thompson, BC didn't do much talking during that timeout. he simply asked his players what they saw and what they thought needed to be done. an interesting strategy, but it worked. NU gradually cut into a 12 point deficit before taking a 49-47 lead with 7:47 left.
but from there, they just stopped playing offensively. Coble was limited to two points in the second half and was in foul trouble down the stretch. add that to Moore's misses, and you're not left with much. from that 7:47 mark, NU didn't score again until there were 51 seconds left and they were down by 12.
Northwestern actually got to the bonus midway through the second half but couldn't take advantage. Nash missed two free throws when they were down one with under five left, and they didn't attempt another until thirty seconds left. the Wildcats were terrified in the paint on offense, and even when they did go up, they did so weakly. Minnesota finished with 11 blocks but it felt like more.
with under three minutes left, NU down three, Moore drove the lane and threw a pass out of bounds. Gus Johnson responded by accurately describing the Wildcats as "athletically challenged"
although Westbrook finished with only 14, he took control of the game in the last four minutes. it was similar to NU's struggles with Evan Turner. when Northwestern faces an athletic, take-charge player, they can't stop him from making baskets in key situations. and at the other end, NU has no one close to that level who can score for them.
and because this post wouldn't be complete without a non sequitur, i swear i heard Gus say something about Blake Hoffarber playing for the Canadian national team. that doesn't seem right because i know he's a minnesota native. and of course, i know this because when Blake Hoffarber was in high school he did this. which he then followed up with this in last year's big ten tournament.
but we'll worry about that later. for now here are my observations from today's loss.
at the beginning of NU's second-half run to get back in it, there was a timeout about 5 minutes into the second half. according to the delightful Charissa Thompson, BC didn't do much talking during that timeout. he simply asked his players what they saw and what they thought needed to be done. an interesting strategy, but it worked. NU gradually cut into a 12 point deficit before taking a 49-47 lead with 7:47 left.
but from there, they just stopped playing offensively. Coble was limited to two points in the second half and was in foul trouble down the stretch. add that to Moore's misses, and you're not left with much. from that 7:47 mark, NU didn't score again until there were 51 seconds left and they were down by 12.
Northwestern actually got to the bonus midway through the second half but couldn't take advantage. Nash missed two free throws when they were down one with under five left, and they didn't attempt another until thirty seconds left. the Wildcats were terrified in the paint on offense, and even when they did go up, they did so weakly. Minnesota finished with 11 blocks but it felt like more.
with under three minutes left, NU down three, Moore drove the lane and threw a pass out of bounds. Gus Johnson responded by accurately describing the Wildcats as "athletically challenged"
although Westbrook finished with only 14, he took control of the game in the last four minutes. it was similar to NU's struggles with Evan Turner. when Northwestern faces an athletic, take-charge player, they can't stop him from making baskets in key situations. and at the other end, NU has no one close to that level who can score for them.
and because this post wouldn't be complete without a non sequitur, i swear i heard Gus say something about Blake Hoffarber playing for the Canadian national team. that doesn't seem right because i know he's a minnesota native. and of course, i know this because when Blake Hoffarber was in high school he did this. which he then followed up with this in last year's big ten tournament.
posted by Fire Bill Carmody at
2:21 PM
15 Comments:
meanwhile, had we picked up that last regular season win, this could have been us: http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=290710130
the NIT selection rules do not allow them to consider things like attendance, popularity, etc., when seeding teams. this changed a few years ago when the NCAA took over the tournament from ESPN.
but I agree that we probably won't get a home game, in any case.
that was some piss poor decision making by carmody to sit coble and thompson foreeeever.
The more I think about it the loss to Minnesota was a microcosm of the carmody years. It featured the best and worst of his reign of error. I’ll start with the worst since this is a FIRE BILL CARMODY blog.
The worst:
1. The team came out flatter than the dancers at a NAMBLA party. Seriously, every fucking big game we come out and have our shit handed to us before we can even get going. We were down 10 in the first 10 minutes just like we scored 15 whole points against OSU in the first half the other day. Maybe he needs to pump up some Rocky music in the lockerroom or tell them if they don’t come out strong they’re going to have to shave dan kreft’s nut hairs.
2. No easy shots. We shot 32% from 3, which is moderately reasonable but we shot 9-27 (33% for you Medill grads) from inside the arc. I thought the vaunted Princeton no offense was supposed to open up the floor for easy lay ups?????? According to the play by play we had 5 lay-ups and ONLY ONE OF THEM WAS ASSISTED. What the fuck is that?? How do you run a back door cut offense and only get one assisted lay up all fucking game. Ugh. There are typically more upperclassmen taking Game Theory classes at 8:30am in the Francis Searle building in the winter than there are assists in the box score for our PGs (and I know because I did something that stupid). We consistently have had one of the lowest scoring offenses in the NCAA, just awesome.
3. The fucking shot clock killed us. We were up two with 5:30 to go and then Carmody kryptonite came back to bite us in the ass. Shot clock violation, momentum swing, Minnesota goes on a 19 to 4 run to close out the game. Why is it so hard to get a fucking shot off?????? Every team plays with the same fucking rules and they seem to do just fine with the 35 second limitation. It’s like carmody runs his offense using an hour glass or a fucking sun dial.
4. We got out rebounded and killed on the offensive boards. Ummm, actually, the rebounding was even. Wow. Maybe this is the progress we have been waiting for after 9 years.
5. we came back just enough to get my hopes up before having our fucking hearts ripped out one more time. I am so fucking sick of this, it isn’t funny or cute anymore. Either lose by 25 or win. Don’t start tickling my balls with a feather if you’re going to stop half way through.
The Best:
1. Nobody got hurt
2. The croatian junior league B team got some nice run for their summer world championships with even Ivan Peljusic getting dusted off. Karati!!!!
It’s time we rid ourselves of sundial bill and start fresh. I don’t need anymore evidence. I need change I can believe in.
These are the 4 things I would look for in a new coach:
1. Young and passionate about basketball
2. Has been around schools like Northwestern where academics are stressed
3. Knows Chicago and the Midwest
4. Is related to the first African American president of the United States of America.
Oh wait, the guy who fits all of those categories was there for the taking. Craig robinson was a fucking Princeton educated banker who made his cash but loved basketball so much he quit to try to become a coach. He parlayed his NU asst. job to a decent run at Brown and in his first year at woeful Oregon state went 7-11 in the pac ten (vs. carmody’s Indiana JV adjusted 6-11 in his 9th year in the big ten). Just wait until robinson gets his own recruiting classes. But no, we had no fucking vision and were handcuffed by what must be pictures of Henry Beinen giving Bill carmody a rusty trombone at some douchewad Princeton eating club. If those pictures don’t exist, I have no idea why car-no-win-dy was allowed to come back after 3 total big ten wins in the two previous seasons.
Fuck Carmody
what, sitting coble and thompson, each with 4 fouls, for 2 whole minutes, in which we went from a 49-49 tie to down 52-49? my god, that fucking killed us. never mind that nash had two free throws and moore had an open 3 while coble/thompson were out, and they both missed everything. and never mind that the three of them immediately shit themselves when they did come in.
as for the lack of backdoor cuts, carmody explained it pretty succinctly in the postgame interview: we haven't had a big man who could hit from 15-18 feet the past few years. if you can work your big to the top of the key and require a defender to come out to him, that opens up the backdoor stuff. vince scott sucked, but he could shoot -- and we had many more backdoor plays while he was at center. if mirkovic can develop a more consistent outside shot -- and he could certainly shoot in high school, so it's not unlikely -- the offense will look better.
oh, and your beloved craig robinson runs the princeton offense.
I submit to AC's superior knowledge and foresight. Fuck Carmody.
as for the lack of backdoor cuts, carmody explained it pretty succinctly in the postgame interview: we haven't had a big man who could hit from 15-18 feet the past few years.
We haven't had a big man who could hit consistently from that range since Carmody has been the coach. Considering how important that is to the running the Princeton offense, going nine years (hell, even three years) without someone filling that role is a pretty significant failure, isn't it?
I'll give credit to the argument that this is the best NU team of all time if they are able to win a couple of NIT games. Until then they are just pretenders to that throne.
looks like more and more people are starting to come around to the FBC way of thinking:
http://www.laketheposts.com/2009/03/i-was-that-guy-pin-it-on-carmody.html
A few points:
1. Thanks for that quote from sundial Bill. Wow, that is amazing. Let me get this straight, we can’t properly run the Princeton offense because we don’t have the right players????? SO WHY THE FUCK ARE WE RUNNING IT????????? Fuckin a. You know what, I don’t have a 12 inch cock, SO I’M NOT IN PORN. If we don’t have the fucking players, how about we DON’T FUCKING RUN IT????? Do they not teach logic classes at Union college?
2. As for craig robinson also running the Princeton no offense, I don’t really care. I am convinced that someone with his pedigree has a much better chance of being able to bring in real ball players who will be able to CREATE THEIR OWN SHOTS when the Princeton offense breaks down (like james harden at ASU and like Jeff Green who took g-town to the final 4). After barack obama, ledong james, and jay-z, Craig robinson has to be the most admired guy among African American high school basketball players in chicago, the Midwest, and maybe even the US (ok that is a bit of an overstatement, but work with me here). The guy made a fuckload of money HUSTLING ON WALL STREET, he played HIGH LEVEL BASKETBALL, and he is part of TEAM OBAMA. If you’re a kid in the city, isn’t that exactly what you want to be? Play hoops and then beat the man at his own game and have access to the new man????? Fuck, even white kids like me want to be this guy. I’m getting a stiffy just thinking about playing for craig robinson and I’m over 30, white, and already have 2 advanced fucking degrees. I have no idea if robinson will actually be a good coach (and would have been happy to start firecraigrobinson.com 5 years from when we hired him if he sucked), but he has every fucking thing this program needs on his resume. I know what robinson can sell to high school basketball players but all I can figure that carmody has to sell is that he can stick his tongue a full 8 inches up henry bienen’s well-coiffed ass (and I have no idea if it is actually even well-coiffed). Jim Phillips, please find a way to right this wrong. Does michelle obama have any other brothers?????????
3. As for those who keep saying this is the best NU team ever, I am going to walk through this math one more time. Indiana was on program killing probation this year. They lost pretty much their whole fucking team from last year. They were playing with essentially a high school team devoid of division 1 players. We had not won in Indiana in 41 fucking years. If indiana did not fuck itself with Kelvin Sampson and just had an average year for them, do you really think we beat them in Indiana since we were 0 for our last 41 and our team isn’t anything all that special???????? No fucking way. In fact, I am not convinced that we even beat an average Indiana team at home. So while I have been Indiana JV adjusting our big ten record from 8-11 to 6-11, isn’t more likely that we would have lost twice to them? So instead of just taking those games out, if you add them as losses (which based on the last 41 years of fucking history they probably are) we are all of a sudden 6-13 in the big ten and 15-15 overall and NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT US EVEN GOING TO THE NIT. But for Kelvin Sampson loading up on stale tacos and taking a massive shit all over the Indiana program, our team this year would likely be .500 and even anonymous would be calling for car-no-win-dy to be fired. DON’T FORGET THE FUCKING CONTEXT. Ugh.
Fuck carmody
Your Indiana argument is specious on its face.
I love the logic: Indiana was dreadful this year, and therefore we got 2 "bonus" wins that we otherwise never would have won, and therefore the 8 B10 wins weren't really anything new this year.
By that same logic, though, this team could never have won at Michigan State or Purdue...and yet they did.
You're arguing that because something has never happened before, it can't happen. OMG, we lost 41 straight times at Indiana! It's impossible that we would have won there this year unless the bottom fell out of their program!
I guess you missed the part where NU also beat Minnesota (then ranked 17) and MSU (then #7) in back-to-back games in January -- the FIRST TIME IN PROGRAM HISTORY THAT THE CATS BEAT RANKED OPPONENTS BACK TO BACK. They had never done it prior to this year. Ever. And by your logic, it should have been impossible for them to do it this year, because MSU and Minnesota weren't on probation like IU.
You can't claim that the 8-10 B10 mark is just the result of IU being terrible. That NU beat MSU and Purdue on the road suggests this team very well could have beaten a good IU team. And that they won back-to-back games against ranked teams proves the "they've-never-done-it-before-therefore-they-won't-do-it-now" argument is invalid.
And you forget: The B10 has had terrible teams before. Often, NU has been that cellar-dweller. But not always. This isar, far from the first time that you could argue that NU's record (or anyone else's) was inflated by the presence of a hapless bottom-feeder.
You clearly don’t get it. I am not saying we got bonus wins against Indiana simply because they were bad or a hapless bottom feeder. You don’t see me subtracting our win against Iowa or Chicago fucking State. The point is Indiana had a ONCE IN A PROGRAM SCANDAL occur which caused them to lose just about all of their scholarship players FOR THIS ONE YEAR. They supposedly have one of the top 10 recruiting classes coming in for 2009-2010.
Given that THEY COULD BARELY PUT A FULL TEAM ON THE COURT, I do not consider them a big ten team this year. They simply weren’t. It would be one thing if they just sucked, but there were TEMPORARY STRUCTURAL ISSUES with their basketball program which are now over. If they suck next year, that is on them.
Sundial Bill car-no-win-dy is lucky that this happened in his 9th god awful year when he was finally on the chopping block thanks to his butt buddy bienen leaving. If you really think NU would have swept a NON-PROBATION INDIANA, you are smoking whatever K. Dion Lee was. Based on the facts that we didn’t sweep one big ten team (other than probation Indiana) and HAVEN’T WON IN INDIANA IN 41 YEARS, I doubt we would have swept them had they not been in their one anomalous year in history.
If you want to call it 1-1 against a normal Indiana, fine, you can have it. So that would have made us 7-12 in the big ten and 16-14 overall. FUCKING BARELY MEDIOCRE, IN FACT STILL 9th OUT OF 11.
If we win 8 games in the big ten next year with sundial bill as our coach and no abolishment of the shot clock, I will put on a dress and let Geno Carlisle punch me in the face (and please tell me you remember that incident, otherwise it makes me sound a little queer). We are going to be worse with Indiana having actual recruits and no Craig Moore to bail us out.
Either way you look at it, we were 9th out of 11 teams (or 9th out of 10 teams if you ignore Indiana like you should), not what I call a lot of fucking progress in year 9 of Car-shitty.
fuck carmody
Yes, and Illinois had a surprisingly good year. If they had been as bad as people expected in the pre-season, then NU probably hangs on and wins that game, and the record goes to 9-9.
We can do this all day. Every year, some teams are surprisingly good and some are surprisngly bad. And at the end of each year, you can go back and say, "Well if X had been as good as they should have been, we wouldn't have won" or "if Y had been as bad as they were supposed to be, we would have won that game." It's a stupid, pointless exercise.
I hate to use cliches, but: You are what you are. Northwestern was 8-10 in the league. Not 8-10 with an asterisk because Indiana is usually better, or 8-10 with an asterisk because Illinois was supposed to be worse. Just 8-10. Deal with it.
BTW, by your logic Michigan State's "real" Big Ten record was 16-2 this year -- not the 15-3 that history will record it as. Why? Because Northwestern is as historically awful as Indiana has been historically good; therefore, MSU's loss shouldn't really count; they just got a bad break that a terrible team had a fluke season in which they won a few games.
Actually 8-11 which is 9th place, but hey, if you want to forget about yesterday's game, so be it.
And you are still missing the point. If every team had FULL ROSTERS you would not make exceptions. INDIANA DID NOT HAVE A FULL ROSTER. Illinois may have overperformed, Iowa probably underperformed, but they both had THEIR COMPLETE TEAMS.
So you honestly think if indiana did not go on probation and have all of their starters leave they would have been 1-17 in the big ten????? We're talkng about Indiana, a consistent top tier big ten team. Jeesh. No wonder you want car-shitty back for another year because you are looking at the wrong data in your analysis. Perhaps you took a semester off from NU and enrolled in the same logic class our Dy-No-Mite coach did at Union college.
but hey, we are what we are as you say (well, actually i think it was bill parcells who said it). A 9TH PLACE TEAM IN AN 11 TEAM LEAGUE IN OUR COACH'S 9th FUCKING YEAR!!!! Wooo----FUCKING---hoooooo!!!!!!
Wake me when sundial bill recruits the sharp shooting center he needs to make his gimmick offense run correctly.
fuck carmody
I'm not forgetting yesterday's game. 8-10 is the official regular season record. The conference tournament doesn't count in those standings.
Nor am I missing the point. Of course Indiana wouldn't have been 1-17 absent the scandal. Maybe they would have been 17-1. Maybe 12-6. Maybe they would have been like Georgetown in the Big East and been stacked with talent -- and then faltered to 7-11 in the conference. Who knows? To say that no way, no how would NU have beaten them is absurd -- especially when NU won at MSU and Purdue AND beat ranked teams back to back FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER THIS YEAR.
More to the point, we don't know how the presence of a strong IU team would have affected the rest of the conference. You presume they should have been stronger, but you're foolish to consider that in a vacuum. Who else might they have beaten? How would that loss have affected that team? Maybe one (or more) of NU's opponents would have been looking ahead to their next game against IU, and NU could have caught them sleeping.
You can't just look back at the season and say, hey, those two games don't really count.
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