Cats blown out in Tip-Off final

The Wildcats went into the championship game of the Basketball Hall of Fame Tip-off looking for their first title of any kind under head coach Chris Collins.

They got embarrassed instead.

Texas Tech blitzed Northwestern early and never looked back, routing the Wildcats 85-49 in a game that was never in doubt.

The long, athletic Red Raiders ran out to a 9-0 lead that quickly escalated to 41-25 by the half. The lead bulged to 41 in the second half as Northwestern shot just 26.7 percent from the field and was never able to make even a dent in Texas Tech’s advantage.

Keenan Evans led Texas Tech with 25 points. Four Raiders wound up in double figures as they shot a blistering 60.4 percent from the floor.

Northwestern was paced by Scottie Lindsey, who scored 17 of NU’s 25 points in the first half and finished with 20 points, the only Wildcat with more than 7.

The Wildcats, who came into the game ranked 20th, dropped to 3-2 on the season, with losses to the only two Power Six conference teams they’ve faced. They looked very much like a team playing its second game in as many days and fourth of the week.

Here are our three pointers on a game to forget for Northwestern:

A horrific start: You knew what kind of game it was going to be for the Wildcats right off the bat. Northwestern began the game with a deficit when they were assessed a technical foul before the tip for not submitting their starting lineup in time. Texas Tech hit the free throw so it was 1-0 before the referee tossed up the jump ball. And it all went downhill from there as Texas Tech opened leads of 13-3 by the under-16 timeout and 23-5 at the 10-minute mark. At that point, Northwestern had more turnovers (7) than points. Lindsey was the only bright spot in the opening period. He scored 17 of the Wildcats’ 25 points in the first half on 5-for-8 shooting, including a three-quarter court heave at the buzzer. The rest of the team shot 2-for-12 and Aaron Falzon (7 points) and Vic Law (1) were the only other Wildcats who made the stat sheet.

Turnovers killed the Cats in the first half: This game was over by halftime, and as well as Texas Tech played, Northwestern was its own worst enemy. The Wildcats committed 15 turnovers in the first half, with star point guard Bryant McIntosh collecting five of them. Worse than that, those 15 miscues turned into 26 Texas Tech points, many of them on slam dunks or alley-oops. They had turnovers on two of their first three possessions and nine by the 10-minute mark. A telling play was McIntosh’s attempted lob that sailed several feet over a leaping Law’s head. Northwestern took much better care of the ball in the second half, committing just two turnovers, but by then the game was out of control.

Defense continues to be a problem: Northwestern’s success last season and throughout the Collins era was built on defense, but the Wildcats have struggled on that end through the first six games of this year. Evans, Texas Tech’s star, had a field day, hitting 9-of-13 shots from the floor and 4-of-5 from beyond the arc. The Red Raiders got the ball inside throughout the game and got any shot they wanted. For the game, they hit 29-of-48 shots from the floor and 52.6 percent (10-of-19) from distance. Against Power Six teams, Northwestern allowed Creighton to score 92 points and the Red Raiders to reach the mid-80s with ease. Collins has talked about problems with communication that hurt their defensive rotations against the Blue Jays that improved in the second half, but they reared up again on Sunday.