Stanford edges NU

Ladies and gentlemen I give you every NU game of any importance ever: Kind of fun to watch, some hope,  ends in depression, and a key player gets hurt. I don't know what else to say. I said NU should play 1-3-1 in this game. They had a great 1-3-1 possession early then went away from it and Stanford went on 12-0 run. Then they go back to it and it gets them back into the game. That's just terribly disappointing from a coaching staff I'm trying to stay positive with. Honestly, though, does anyone think that I should have a better idea how to game plan for NU's opponents than our coaches? I don't. But apparently today I did. What exactly did they do over the last three days. When Jim Philips finally does what he's wanted to do since he got to Northwestern and fires Bill Carmody and saddles us all with Chris Collins I hope Bill Carmody remembers this game is a major reason why. That's a 15-point NU win if the 'Cata play 1-3-1 all night which was obvious to anyone who watched Stanford play except for NU's coaching staff. That s awful. I doubt 2,000 people will show up for the Brown game now and you can count on Welsh-Ryan being 60-70% Michigan fans for the Big Ten opener. 

Some other thoughts: I loved Reggie Hearn's guts as he battled on an injured ankle to keep NU in the game. Overall Hearn was great with 18 points and 9 rebounds. Tre Demps, despite some tough misses including the last shot, was also excellent playing limited minutes due to injury. The kid is a great athlete who will do big things in his career, I also expect big things from Alex Olah. Olah had a career game vs really good opposition. In fact, Olah has played very well vs talented bigs from both Baylor and 
Stanford. His backup Mike Turner made a nice three, but did have one of the worst sequences of basketball ever in the first half. 

Also, lack of production from Dave Sobolewski and Jared Swopshire hurt NU tonight as well. Swop has to make threes at some point or he's not nearly as useful as we'd like to think in the lineup. Sobo saw more defensive attention tonight, but that's going to become the norm. He needs to adjust. It was good that Alex Marcotullio got back from injury to pick up some of the slack, but Sobo has got to be the main guy for NU at this point. 

The other positive I can find is that Stanford is an upper level PAC-12 team and NU should and could have won this game, but isn't that where we started tonight. Every 
significant game for NU seems to end with coulda, shoulda, or woulda but that will never get it done and maybe that's the sad truth. Maybe that day where NU makes the tournament just isn't going to happen. Who knows. NU plays Brown in two days. All we can do is watch.