Cats hang on to beat Mizzou
Northwestern led for all but the first 30 seconds but had to gut out a 67-62 win over Missouri in the third-place game of the CBE Classic.
Bryant Mcintosh and Tre Demps led the way in the scoring department with 13 apiece for the Wildcats. Terrence Phillips had a game-high 16 points and six rebounds for Missouri, while Kevin Puryear threw in 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting.
Gavin Skelly returned from an ankle injury sustained last week against Columbia, bringing a boost of energy to the lineup. On his first possession in the game, he had a nice deflection of a backdoor pass. He then immediately got involved on the offensive end, making a nice pass to Joey van Zegeren before scoring five points of his own on the next two possessions. Skelly looked good passing out of the high post, finishing the first half with two assists including a nice give-and-go with McIntosh.
After leading by as many as 20 in the first half, coach Chris Collins saw his offense sputter for much of the second half, allowing Missouri to get cut the lead to as little as three points in the final minute. In the end, the Wildcats held on thanks to made free throws and missed prayers by the Tigers.
With the win, Northwestern improves to 4-1 on the season heading into Saturday's home matchup with the New Orleans Privateers.
Here are our three pointers:
Hot start, cold finish: McIntosh opened the game on fire, hitting three early threes on his way to scoring Northwestern's first 11 points. One night after it took 12 minutes for someone outside of Demps to make a field goal in the second half, it took seven minutes for someone not named McIntosh to hit in the first half. Overall, the offense looked solid through the first 20 minutes. The Wildcats raced out to a 31-11 lead with 7:51 remaining and wound up shooting 52 percent from the field in the first half, including 7-of-15 from deep and 5-of-7 from the line. The second half was a different story, however. After scoring 31 points in the first 13 minutes of the game, Northwestern managed only 36 points through the remaining 27 minutes. An 18-8 Missouri run extending from the end of the first to the start of the second half cut the 20-point lead in half. For the remainder of the second half, both teams were fairly sloppy on offense, and Missouri was able to chip away at the Wildcats' lead behind hustle plays and timely three-point shooting. Northwestern shot 40 percent from the field in the second half while forcing only two Missouri turnovers; not the type of energy Collins would want to see his team close games with. Meanwhile, the Wildcats finished with 14 turnovers, which resulted directly on 16 points for the Tigers.
The zone holds strong: Northwestern played good team defense for most of the night, making up for a lackluster finish by the offense. The zone did a great job keeping the Tigers out of the paint, as their first shot attempt inside the paint came over 12 minutes into the game. The Wildcats and Tigers both finished with 33 rebounds, although 10 of Missouri's rebounds came on the offensive glass, some of which were crucial, coming down the stretch. The Wildcats gave up 38 points in the second half, including 10 second-chance points after the intermission alone. Van Zegeren had a solid game, pouring in eight points on 3-for-3 shooting. He had a couple of big baskets midway through the second half when the lead was cut to single-digits, including a dunk off a feed from Scottie Lindsey. The transfer from Virginia Tech also had five rebounds and a block, and aside from an air-ball free-throw attempt, he had a really good night for the Wildcats.
Northwestern hangs on without McIntosh: Six days after watching Fairfield trim a 16-point lead to three in the second half, the Wildcats again prevailed despite losing a large lead. For as good as he was to start the game, McIntosh faded somewhat in the second half, largely a result of foul trouble. He picked up his fourth foul with 10:15 remaining, then his fifth with a little over four minutes to go. From that point on, the offense ran mainly through Demps. Alex Olah was uninvolved on the offensive end, scoring eight points on 2-of-7 shooting to go with six rebounds. Lindsey shot only 1-for-6 from the field, but he added a career-high seven assists, including a clutch pass to van Zegeren in the second half to momentarily halt Missouri's momentum. With the game on the line, it was Phillips taking and making the big shots for the Tigers. On one sequence, the freshman point guard hit a big three-pointer, then responded to a clutch jumper by Demps with an and-one and a fast-break layup to cut the led to four late in the half. The Wildcats managed to hang on, thanks to missed free throws by the Tigers and strong rebounding out of its wings.