The Northwestern Wildcats have to believe it can`t get any worse than this.
Flaunting its superior strength on offense and its quickness on defense, Indiana wiped out the Wildcats 99-58 Saturday night before a crowd of 14,852 in Assembly Hall.
Off to their best start since they won the 1987 NCAA tournament, the Hoosiers, who are ranked fifth nationally, improved their overall record to 14-1 and their conference record to 2-0. Northwestern fell to 5-6 and 0-2.
”They`re extremely talented, extremely deep and very unselfish,” said Northwestern coach Bill Foster. ”They move on offense, they`re always cutting and they look for one another. They play the game the way it should be played. ”We didn`t come close to getting anything inside. We had a couple of good spurts. But all of a sudden when we played bad, we couldn`t stop it.”
Although the Hoosiers failed to duplicate their awesome start in Tuesday`s conference opener against Illinois, they asserted themselves midway thorugh the first half and by intermission held a 48-29 lead.
In the beginning, coach Bob Knight`s team concentrated on working the ball inside to its two best players, forwards Eric Anderson and Calbert Cheaney.
Gradually, the Hoosiers began including outside shots in their repertoire, in the process building a 27-15 lead.
Foster juggled his defenses to try to disrupt the continuity of Indiana`s screen-oriented offense. Sometimes the Wildcats were in a man-to-man, sometimes a conventional zone and sometimes a trapping zone.
At times Knight attempted to counter the strategy by using a three-guard offense.
Northwestern sliced the Hoosiers` lead to 28-24 by outscoring them 9-1. Senior forward Lucis Reece led the surge by scoring on an outside shot, a three-point attempt and a layup off a pass from Don Brotz.
Knight was incensed at Cheaney, who was guarding Reece. The coach pulled his sophomore star out of the game and berated him in front of the bench.
The entire team got the message. The Hoosiers tightened the clamps on defense. Under pressure, Northwestern began giving the ball away.
Of the next 25 points scored in the half, 20 were tallied by the Hoosiers. Anderson accounted for eight of the points, senior guard Lyndon Jones came off the bench to collect six, Cheaney scored four and Greg Graham got two of a stuff.
All told, Knight got 16 points from his bench in the opening half, while the scoring by Northwestern`s subs consisted of three points by Brotz.
The shooting percentages underscored the degree of Indiana`s dominance-. 588 for the home team and .333 for the invaders.
Another downer for NU was the fact that 6-foot-11 freshman Kevin Rankin picked up his third foul with 2:05 remaining in the half when he grabbed Jamal Meeks while the Big 10`s assist leader was driving down the lane.
Early in the second half, with 15:36 left in the game, Rankin was whistled for his fourth foul, again in an attempt to thwart Meeks.
Rankin stayed in the game, and unfortunately for Northwestern, the complexion of the game stayed the same.
When Rankin fouled out trying for an offensive rebound with 12:42 to play the Wildcats were down 67-37.
With 7:26 to go, sophomore guard Todd Leslie, who went into the mismatch as NU`s leading scorer with a 16.3 average, also fouled out. Leslie was held to four field goals-all from three-point distance-and 12 points.
Freshman guard Damon Bailey came off the bench to lead Indiana with 17 points, 14 coming in the second half. Greg Graham and Anderson added 16 apiece; Cheaney scored 15 and Nover collected a dozen.
Reece was high for NU with 15.
”Reece impressed me,” said Knight. ”He worked his behind off, every minute he was out there even when he knew they weren`t going to win.”
Someone asked Knight: ”What was the turning point tonight?”
”I don`t think there was a turning point tonight,” he replied, telling it like it was.
