It was a pretty uneventful night at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
A game between a Division I team and a Division II team went as expected, with Northwestern winning 90-50 over Illinois-Springfield.
NU dominated from start to finish in their first game in over a week.
Pete Nance, as he often does, led the hosts in scoring with 15. Boo Buie and Ty Berry also cracked double figures with 11 apiece.
The Prairie Stars were led by 14 points from James Kelley.
Here are our takeaways from Northwestern's third straight win, bringing their record to 8-2:
Collins empties the bench: Northwestern used 13 players on Monday night: all 12 scholarship players and walk-on Roy Dixon III. It was a good chance for head coach Chris Collins to let end-of-the-bench guys get some in-game experience before conference play starts.
Brooks Barnhizer and Matthew Nicholson, the two scholarship players usually out of the rotation, each saw double-digit minutes for the first time this season.
Northwestern has flashed their depth this season, and will likely go 10 deep for conference play, but Barnhizer and Nicholson showed what they are capable of when Collins needs them.
Cats tower over Prairie Stars: No player in Illinois-Springfield's rotation stands above 6-foot-6, so the Cats' three big men -- Nance, Robbie Beran and Ryan Young -- were able to use their height to propel the Cats on both ends of the floor.
Those three combined for 31 points and 17 rebounds, while Nance and Beran each added a pair of blocks.
The Big Ten is a conference filled with dominant big men, so NU won't have a massive size advantage again. It was, though, a welcome sight to see Northwestern identify an advantage they had over their opponent, and use it early and often.
Strong start to the second half: Whatever Collins said to his team at halftime seemed to have worked, as the Wildcats scored the first 17 points of the final 20 minutes.
The run spanned nearly six-and-a-half minutes, as the Cats' defense forced UIS into a number of turnovers, which led to easy buckets in transition.
NU's 18-point halftime lead ballooned to 35 with the scoring run, and reached the 40-point final margin throughout the second half.
Northwestern was never challenged in this one, but that run of dominance put Collins' squad fully on cruise control.
Wildcats shoot the lights out: Buie started the scoring with a pair of triples and his teammates followed his lead from there.
Northwestern shot a blazing 55% from the field and 39% from beyond the arc. Only four players hit threes for NU: Buie, Berry, Barnhizer and Julian Roper II. But that was more than enough on Monday night.
Again, this game wasn't about the Wildcats proving anything. They were supposed to win big, and they did just that. It was, however, impressive to see the Cats come off a long time away from game action and handle their business with ease.
One more non-con: The Wildcats have another long layoff coming up, as their next game is Dec. 30, at home against the Prairie View A&M Panthers. That will be NU's last non-conference game: the 20-game Big Ten slate begins with their first game in the new year.
Non-conference play has been a wash for the Wildcats, more or less. They won the seven games they should have won, and lost the two games against equal or better competition. Albeit, both of those games were down-to-the-wire contests where Northwestern certainly had a chance.
Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades, though, and the Cats will have to start winning those close games against respectable competition to have a shot at going dancing for the second time in school history.
