Northwestern Wildcats at Figthing Illini Preview: Keep it rolling at home

8pm Central. 9 Eastern
Assembly Hall in Champaign, Illinois
ESPN2

Northwestern, the team you love to hate, because it is just so easy to. The Wildcats are once again in their annual hope against hope for the NCAA tournament, that will likely once again end in disappointment. Losing to St. John's earlier in the preconference season and dropping the first two Big Ten games to Purdue and Michigan St. mean there is a very small margin of error left for the Wildcats if they want to finally make it into a bracket, and you can believe they are desperate to win tonight.

A factor working in our favor though is that perhaps Northwestern's best player, John Shurna, has been hobbled by an ankle sprain as of late, and at least in the first two Big Ten games, it has cost him in production. While most teams would rest Shurna for a game, maybe two, the Wildcats' chances of a post season berth are too slim to risk even one game. Carmody needs top 25 victories to get this team in the post season, and if he has to play Shurna to get into March, he will do it.

This is not to say that Northwestern isn't still a dangerous team, just because they really haven't beaten anyone of note does not mean they wont get an upset from time to time. They can score in huge numbers with the Princeton offense, and do it by shooting the ball from distance. They have five legitimate shooting threats from three, all of whom have hit at more or less 40% or better. Our guards are going to have their hands full, and cannot give room to theirs, because they will shoot guarded or open, but I much prefer guarded.

I look to, once again, our big men to take advantage of their length over Northwestern. The Cats have one legit big man in Luka Mirkovic, and his style of play is very similar to our Mike Tisdale, which is great, because Tisdale knows how to guard that, and rarely is he out-europed around the basket, maybe this is the game he wont be stuck on the bench in foul trouble.

Last year our Big Men were, a little inconsistent against NU. In the loss at Welsh Ryan, Tisdale had a quality six rebounds and fourteen points, while Mike Davis had just two rebounds and no points. In the win at home, Tisdale had eleven rebounds and thirty one points, while Davis had seventeen rebounds and twenty points!

Fact is, if our big guys are on, they can destroy the paint against the Wildcats. It is an advantage that we have and we should use it. If we got the same production out of the Mikes in both games last year, we would have had one less disappointing loss to our name, instead we were shot out of the gym in Evanston. (Thank God Jeremy Nash isn't around anymore to put up points against us.)

This is a home game, and if we take care of business, we can take our home record to a very nice 10-0. If you want to be an elite team in college basketball, you have to keep a home court advantage. There is no reason we should have more than three home losses this year, and it is very possible we will have less than that. But you have to take care of business against the NU's of the world for that to be a possibility.