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A 69-66 lead over Virginia with five minutes to play. A 58-54 lead over Oklahoma State with 10 minutes to play. A 61-56 lead over Ohio State with 13 minutes to play. And now, this Saturday night, a 67-60 lead over Minnesota with four and a half minutes to play.
“You try to condition and prepare your guys to be in a position where in those last four minutes you can be really solid on both ends of the floor. And we just weren’t that today,” head coach Chris Collins said. “We’re just not doing a really good job when we get those leads in the second half, of just putting our foot down and saying ‘This is our game and we’ve got to keep at it.’”
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Against Minnesota, Northwestern not only failed to keep the lead, but ’Cats basically handed the game to the visiting Golden Gophers. Over the final four minutes and 25 seconds of Northwestern’s first game of 2026, the Wildcats were outscored 24-11. Even worse than the continuous collapse — just how repetitive it was. Transition three pointers. Free throws. And dunk after dunk from Grayson Grove. The redshirt first-year, who had scored 28 points in his collegiate CAREER before Saturday, scored 12 points on 6-for-6 shooting. All six makes were dunks or layups.
“The middle pick-and-roll is just this simple but effective play. Obviously, they ran it continuously down the stretch,” Jayden Reid, who scored 19 points in the defeat, explained Saturday night. “We have to execute the gameplan. Grove was 6-for-6, all dunks. He affected the game.”
If the issue with the defense was merely a lack of execution — a problem with the head — that would be one thing. A lack of knowledge about proper pick-and-roll coverage is, in theory, fixable, as long as the team has lots of practice time and film sessions. According to Collins, the issue with the defense wasn’t a lack of size — a problem with the body — either. The issue with the defense is one of the most devastating issues any team can face — a…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/same-problem-northwestern-achilles-heel-173828616.html
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Publish date : 2026-01-04 17:38:00
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