Northwestern ambushes Purdue in West Lafayette, has chance for .500 Big Ten record

Northwestern's NIT prospects have been discussed for quite some time. It seems that the Wildcats--in the face of daunting odds--are trying to shift the conversation to a bigger tournament.
 
No, Bill Carmody's team still isn't a likely candidate for the Big Dance, but after Wednesday's stunning 64-61 shocker over an increasingly healthy Purdue club, the boys from Evanston find themselves in the NCAA discussion.

Before detailing the Wildcats' wondrous night in Mackey Arena, briefly consider NU's overall body of work. The Cats, now at 8-9 in the conference, could attain a .500 league mark with a win on Sunday at Ohio State. Should Northwestern pull off a surprise in Columbus, the purple people would boast a win against Florida State, along with wins over Michigan State, Purdue (both on the road), and Wisconsin. Given the massive logjam in the wide middle of the league (below the top three and above the bottom two teams), a 9-9 conference record, combined with a semifinal or final in the Big Ten Tournament, would realistically put Northwestern on the selection committee's radar screen.
 
Yes, the idea of Northwestern getting in is still improbable. Yes, the notion is quite counter-intuitive. But as of the evening of March 4, 2009, it's real.
 
Now, exactly how could this possibly happen? In a word, resilience.
 
Northwestern's halfcourt offense performed consistently well on Wednesday in West Lafayette. The Cats shot 50 percent in the first half (13-of-26) and just under 50 percent (14-of-29) in the second. Carmody's Princeton-style offense moved the ball effectively, and when shots didn't drop, a purple-shirted player was able to get to the glass and produce second-chance points. The problem for NU in this game came at the defensive end, where the Boilermakers shot the ball with confidence in the first 29 minutes of play. Purdue hit four 3-pointers in the final seven minutes of the first half to attain a 35-28 advantage, and the home team continued to shoot well as the second half began. Northwestern usually defeats opponents when its offense is efficient, so it had to be somewhat discouraging for the Cats to score the ball, yet find themselves trailing by multiple possessions.
 

This is where the visitors' resilience entered the fray in hostile territory.
 
Northwestern kept plugging away and finally locked down the Boilermakers, changing the game's tenor precisely when such a pronounced shift seemed next to impossible. Much as Indiana shut out Michigan State from the field for almost nine minutes on Tuesday, the Cats were able to keep Purdue from hitting a shot for 8:38 in this contest. By the time coach Matt Painter's club finally tallied a basket at the 3:10 mark of regulation, the No. 20 team in America found itself trailing by a 55-49 score.
 
This set up a closing act in which Northwestern's mental toughness would continue to hold up under pressure.
 
One might recall that in mid-January, Purdue stole a win in Evanston because the Cats hit only 6-of-12 free throws in the game's final minutes. Nearly two months later, NU's Kevin Coble and Michael Thompson both went 2-for-2 at the charity stripe in the final minute to seal a rather remarkable victory for a club that, in its attitude and its performance, is playing as though an NCAA bid is still on the table, waiting to be taken.
 
Naturally, history stands in the way of Northwestern reaching the Big Dance in 2009. But if this team can replicate this Boilermaker-busting effort at Ohio State--and then again in Indianapolis on at least two occasions--the fearless Wildcats could send history crashing to the ground, and complete the Big Ten's greatest Cinderella story in quite some time.

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