Ugly, Ugly, Ugly

I doubt many people were expecting Northwestern to beat Virginia; those that were are probably delusional. Even the most optimistic guy I know, me, didn't expect Northwestern to win tonight. Most fans probably didn't even think Northwestern would keep it close.

But what was that?

Well, it was the worst loss during Bill Carmody's tenure at Northwestern.

A 94-52 thrashing on the road at the hand of the Virginia Cavaliers left a lot of NU fans searching for answers to some of these questions:

"Are we going to win a conference game?"
"Was that a JV team out there?"
"Do we know how to play defense?"
"Do we know how to play offense?"
"Do we know how to play basketball?"
"Is the team really as bad as they looked tonight?"

Let's address the last question first. Northwestern is not 42 points worse than Virginia. They are significantly worse than the Cavaliers, but Virginia shot an insane 16 for 32 from behind the three-point line. The Wildcat perimeter defense is notably horrible, but there were times, particularly in the first half when NU was still within 10, where a UVA player would come down the court, launch a longer-than-NBA-range three and hit nothing but net.

So the 'Cats had that going against them. Then there were the normal rebounding problems. Northwestern was out-rebounded by 15. So even when Virginia was missing three-pointers, they were getting their own rebounds and getting second chance baskets. That's not going to change.

The 1-3-1 stunk tonight. Bill Carmody, on the WGN postgame show, said that he was probably going to switch the defense, most likely to a 2-3, because his team simply can't play the 1-3-1. I agree with that assessment. The defense was atrocious.

And the offense was horrid, too. Rushed shots, turnovers, broken plays, air balls. It was all ugly. I don't even know how to fix that one. Most of this team is lacking any sort of grasp on the Princeton Offense.

And why can't this team shoot free throws? You would think a team that is so undersized at such an athletic disadvantage would capitalize on FREE POINTS. Instead, the 'Cats shot FOUR FOR FIFTEEN from the stripe.

I'm frustrated, but I guess I shouldn't have expected much. I just didn't think it would be THAT ugly. If we are playing this poorly on the road against UVA, I don't want to think what games against Wisconsin, Ohio State and Indiana are going to look like.

It's going to be a long season.