Game Notes: Illinois Wesleyan University @ North Central College(2/6/13)

Final Score
Illinois Wesleyan 102, NCC 69


Game Summary
In my first game back from sick leave, the Cardinals (11-11, 4-7) started out pretty well despite being shorthanded (Michelle Todd and Tonisha Ellington were out due to injury), standing up to the small ball lineup of the Titans (15-7, 8-3) to have a couple small leads early before Wesleyan took over with a big run to go up 27-11. Then the Cardinals caught fire and went on an 11-0 run and used that momentum to pull within 1 at 31-30. The Titans went on a big 17-4 run to end the half up by 14. They came put of halftime on fire and the game was never in doubt the rest of the way.

Key Stats

• Illinois Wesleyan: 6 players in double figures, 3 players with double digit rebounds. Led by Katy Seibring (25-11) and Taylor Reaber (17-15), the Titans were dominant offensively. They were constantly able to break North Central's press to the point where Coach Roof finally called it off with a good chunk of time left. Even then the Titans showed excellent ball movement. The Achilles heel though was their long range shooting (0-10 from deep).
• Illinois Wesleyan: outscored NCC in the paint 84-32. And now we get to the main reason why the above happened. The player that impressed me the most on Wesleyan with this last night was Colleen McMahon (16 pts on 8-11 shooting). I can't tell you how many of her shots were pull up jumpers from about 6-8 feet, which was brilliant against a charge artist like Sophie Newson. It also underscored North Central's unfortunate flaw in its system in allowing tons of easy baskets. They add up.
• Emily Murphy (NCC): 4-8 FG, 2-3 FT, 10 pts, 5 reb (3 ofr), 1 blk. Emily had probably the best stat line last night, but it was a real struggle offensively against a really good zone defense for the Titans but was able to get a few good buckets towards the end.

North Central System Watch

• Line Changes: At least 40
• NCC 3PT: 9-39 (23.1%). This is about par for the course for this team, but they used a few of these threes in their run to pull within one. Unfortunately the rest of the night most of these weren't falling.
• IWU Turnovers: 25. For a team of this caliber, 25 isn't bad. A good chunk of these were traveling calls, which were liberally whistled both ways in the first half. NCC by comparison had 26.

Final Thoughts
At one point in the first half I was bold enough to think we had a shot of winning. Wesleyan was struggling on layups and free throws and we were getting hot. Then Coach Mia Smith called a timeout to stop the bleeding and it effectively stopped. But credit this Cardinal team for not giving up despite the overwhelming odds.

NCC has one home date left, and that's against North Park on the 16th. That's probably the toughest game left on the slate. Carthage had already locked up a tournament berth and just needs a win and Wheaton loss to ensure Tarble Arena steals the CCIW Tournament from the Shirk Center in Bloomington. Wheaton and Wesleyan both locked up berths with their wins last night and that last spot can easily be NCC's. If the Cardinals win out, it's theirs.