Forgive Northwestern coach Bill Carmody for feeling as though he is enduring the plagues of Job.
In the last week alone he has seen several players miss practice and game time with the flu. It took 21 hours to make the short trip to Michigan.
And starting guard Mohamed Hachad suffered a groin injury in practice that forced him to miss nearly all of Wednesday night’s game against the Wolverines.
“I know I don’t have [Job’s] patience, though,” Carmody said with something of a weary smile.
Michigan provided the latest test of his patience, one Northwestern (8-7, 1-2 Big Ten) couldn’t overcome as the Wolverines (11-5, 2-0) handed the Wildcats their third straight road loss and second straight conference defeat, 71-61 before a crowd of 10,499.
The marvel may have been that Northwestern managed to be on the Michigan campus at all. Problems with the charter flight to Ann Arbor forced the team to spend Tuesday night in a Chicago-area hotel. Fog caused their flight to divert to Toledo and forced the Wildcats to take a one-hour bus ride to Crisler Arena that arrived barely an hour ahead of the game.
Even so, the Wildcats found themselves with the ball and down only 61-58 with more than three minutes remaining. But consecutive possessions ending with a turnover, two offensive fouls and two missed shots from in the lane killed the hope of an upset. Northwestern went the final 5 1/2 minutes without scoring from the field.
“Northwestern had some travel problems getting here, and I was really impressed with how tough they were, especially with having some players out with the flu,” Michigan coach Tommy Amaker said.
NU outrebounded Michigan and shot 47.7 percent from field, 50 percent on three-pointers. Vedran Vukusic led the Wildcats with 22 points, and T.J. Parker matched his season high with 18.
But Michigan shot 56 percent from the field and made 19 of 25 free throws. The Wildcats tied the game twice in the first half and cut several sizeable Wolverines leads to as little as one point, the last with 14 1/2 minutes remaining.
They could not, however, make either the crucial shot or defensive stop to gain the upper hand in a game in which they never led.
“On the road, we don’t play defense like we do at home,” Parker said. “At home, they don’t get that many open shots and don’t drive as easy.”
They don’t make as many baskets either.
“They were putting everything they shot up there in,” Vukusic said. “That’s what hurt us. We played well and with intensity but had some stupid turnovers that hurt us.”
Michigan battered the Wildcats on the outside shooting of Daniel Horton (24 points) and Dion Harris (17) and the inside power of Courtney Sims (17).
NU had as much trouble getting to Michigan as it did playing there. The team charter took off Tuesday night but was ordered back to O’Hare when a smoke detector in the plane went off.
Fire trucks surrounded the plane when it landed and players waited about three hours, then reboarded, only to have the pilot report a second mechanical problem. The team gave up trying and was put up at a hotel at 2 a.m. Wednesday.
The scheduled noon flight Wednesday was pushed back until 2 p.m. (for the 7 p.m. Eastern time game), only to be diverted to Toledo.
“It was kind of bad to stay [in Chicago] and wait for the plane five hours, but we can’t use that as an excuse because we played well,” Parker said.
