Northwestern looked like easy prey for 24th-ranked Illinois Saturday night in Evanston.
The Wildcats had lost their first nine Big 10 games, including an 81-53 whipping by Illinois at Champaign Jan. 12. They’d lost their coach, Ricky Byrdsong, for reasons still unclear. They had taken only two home games from the Fighting Illini since 1978.
But Northwestern turned all that adversity and confusion into a shocking 79-68 victory in front of 8,117 in sold-out Welsh-Ryan Arena.
“I hope (Byrdsong) saw it,” said Northwestern interim coach Paul Swanson, who said he conferred with his absent boss in devising a game plan last week.
Byrdsong planned to watch on television. If he did, he saw a masterful performance by Northwestern’s inside-outside combination, Kevin Rankin and Patrick Baldwin. The seniors each scored 21 points and hauled down nine rebounds.
He also saw Northwestern outrebound the nation’s best rebounding team, 36-32, and shut out all but four Illini.
Illinois coach Lou Henson had feared that Byrdsong’s mysterious absence would fire up the Wildcats. A sluggish Illinois team, playing without ill guard T.J. Wheeler, had no answer for a team with its emotional meter set to “high.”
But Henson seemed to think that attributing the victory to emotion alone would sell the Wildcats short.
“Emotion might have had something to do with it, but let me tell you something-that is a skilled basketball team,” Henson said. “I’ve got to wonder how that team lost nine. Northwestern played about as well as any team we’ve played all year.”
If it was a monumental victory for Northwestern, it was a devastating defeat for Illinois.
The Illini, trying to remain in contention in the wild Big 10 race, dropped to 6-4 in the conference, 13-6 overall. Northwestern (10-9, 1-9) has reached double figures in victories for the first time since 1983-84.
The Illini did little to back up another heroic effort by senior Deon Thomas. No Illini made a basket until Tom Michael, who replaced Wheeler in the starting lineup, drained a three-pointer with 5:06 left in the first half.
Thomas finished with 28 points. Illinois’ other scorers-Michael, Kiwane Garris and Jerry Hester-combined for 40.
The rest of the Illini couldn’t outscore Wheeler, who never took off his sweats. Starters Shelly Clark and Richard Keene went a combined 0 for 12 in 48 minutes.
“It seemed like three-fourths of this team wasn’t ready to play,” Thomas said. “Whenever you have an entire team ready to play and three-fourths of another team not ready to play, you can tell what the outcome is going to be.”
For the Illini, it had the makings of a disaster from the opening moments, when Henson sent in reserve Gene Cross and yanked point guard Garris for a quick lecture.
Later, a frustrated Henson had twin towers Clark and Thomas on the bench and another walk-on, 6-foot-10-inch Steve Roth, in the lineup.
Roth and Cross both work hard. But they generally don’t appear until games are out of hand.
This one wasn’t. The Wildcats leaped to a 29-15 lead, but they appeared ready to fold when Illinois ripped off the first seven points of the second half and drew within 42-37.
But Baldwin and Rankin, who have seen too much losing and felt too much heartache in the last four years, took it upon themselves to stop the bleeding.
“The big key is we are a very mature team and have handled adversity many times before,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin chased down the loose balls and hit the tough shots. Rankin found space in the middle-and he also hit all nine of his free throws.
“We started Shelly Clark on him and there was no contest,” Henson said.
Most of the meetings between these intrastate rivals fall into that category. The Illini had taken 33 of the 37 games since 1975.
But this one was different.
