Old Problems doom Northwestern against UCLA

For the first time in the school’s history, Northwestern men’s basketball played a game at Pauley Pavilion. What came out of that said game? The ghost of John Wooden haunting the visitors.

The Wildcats were coming off their first Big Ten victory, fittingly just under 10 miles away as the crow flies from this matchup. USC had four losses before Northwestern came to town, with three of those being to ranked opponents. It was a big time win for the ‘Cats, especially considering it wasn’t the expected outcome. While the opening spread was the same for both the game against USC and this matchup with UCLA, the latter went differently.

“We had come out here kind of a battered team, a little bit demoralized being 0-7,” Chris Collins said in the postgame press conference. “I think we regained some spirit on the trip, which is good for us.”

The Bruins are a different beast. USC had lost games at home earlier in the season. For UCLA, the closest any team had gotten to dethroning them at home was a two-point Bruins win. That win came against No. 4 Purdue. The Boilermakers had been rolling teams for the most part this season, apart from a loss in Ames, Iowa. When head coach Matt Painter and Co. took their trip to the Los Angeles area, they defeated USC at the Galen Center. Three days later, they couldn’t take down UCLA at the legendary Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins defeated the Boilermakers 69-67 to everyone’s surprise, especially considering they had just lost three of their last five. However, what UCLA did have was the home court advantage.

I remember going to Pauley Pavilion while I was touring colleges. I was in Los Angeles to visit both USC and UCLA, and ended up going to a Bruins basketball game before they were in the Big Ten, hence it being a conference matchup versus Colorado. Jaime Jaquez Jr., now averaging 15.4 points-per-game with the Miami Heat, was the leading scorer for UCLA as it won 68-54 thanks to a decisive 40-23 second half. What I remember the most about being at a UCLA home basketball game was the crowd noise. The entire game, the Bruins fans were locked in and cheering.

That crowd energy was the same in this contest, and it was crucial to Northwestern’s anemic second half.

Jayden Reid air-balled his first shot of the game: a deep three pointer he attempted as the shot clock was expiring. That shot came with 12:14 remaining in the first half. For the remainder of the first half and the entire second half, the entire Bruins fandom was shouting “airball” when Reid had the ball. He finished the day with just one point and played just six minutes.

Nick Martinelli had 20 points — his 11th-straight game with 20 or more. However, he had only 14 with under two minutes to go. Take out the quick six points Martinelli scored as the game neared its close, and he was ice cold in the second half. He had four points off of four free throws while shooting 0-of-5 from the field, including 0-of-2 from three, all the way from when 47 seconds remained in the first half to there being just 1:46 left in the entire game. Martinelli going scoreless (outside of the free throws) sums up what was an offensive slugfest for Northwestern.

“I thought [UCLA] did a pretty good job on Martinelli.” Collins said. “I know he finished with 22 or whatever, but it was hard earned.”

Angelo Ciaravino made a layup with 13:36 left in the second half as UCLA led 55-42. The next time Northwestern made a field goal, there was 2:54 on the clock and the ‘Cats were down 62-56 after Max Green’s third three pointer of the night. The fact that UCLA scored just seven points in that span compared to Northwestern’s 11 is normally something positive. In this case, it was quite the opposite. The ‘Cats did shoot well from the free throw line, including going 14-of-16 in the second half. However, NU missed all six of its shots. While there were a fair amount of free throws within that window for the Wildcats, only getting up six shots (all of which missed) is not a good sign, especially when the other team was struggling as much as it was from the charity stripe.

The game could have been closer too at halftime, if not for Tyler Bilodeau and Trent Perry playing like a combination of all UCLA stars from the past. Bilodeau was a perfect 6-of-6 from the field and 4-of-4 from three in the first half, scoring 16 points (he finished with 18). What made it worse was the fact that all of his three point attempts in the first half were wide open.

“We didn’t do a great job in the two-man actions with Bilodeau, and that’s kind of their bread and butter,” Collins said. “We probably didn’t have the right coverage on it in the first half. We made a little adjustment and went to switching in the second half and kind of took away his pick and pops.”

Perry too was sensational, scoring 12 points in the first half on 5-of-7 shooting while he made two of his three foul shots. The rest of the Bruins roster in the first half? 13 points. Bilodeau and Perry had 28 combined in the first half, while the two of them shot a joint 11-of-13. No matter who you’re playing, allowing two players to score that much in a singular half on those shooting splits will almost certainly have your team facing a deficit that it needs to fight back against.

Northwestern is still searching for a reliable second and third scorer consistently behind Martinelli. While that continues, the ‘Cats will continue to try out different lineups, switch up the rotations and play mix-and-match until something clicks. The starting lineup consisting of first-years Jake West, Tre Singleton and Tyler Kropp, alongside Green and Martinelli has been playing well and was the lineup that NU got its first Big Ten victory with. For now, its going to be wait-and-see as Penn State is the next opponent on the schedule.