Northwestern postgame whiparound

Hey gang,

Don't have a lot of time because I need to get back to courtside to watch the second half of the Northwestern-DePaul women's game. Quite entertaining, though it was sad to see Demons senior guard Deirdre Naughton go down with a right knee injury in the first half. The New Trier grad is a player.

Really quickly...
1) Freshman guard Alex Marcotullio injured his right thumb (his non-shooting hand) while diving for a loose ball near the scorer's table in the first half. It looked grotesque when he held his thumb aloft in hopes of getting immediate medical attention, but Northwestern believes the sharpshooter didn't break anything. They plan precautionary X-rays anyway.

2) Northwestern isn't wasting any time prepping for Friday's big game with No. 23 Notre Dame. After handling their postgame business (showers, media, food), they planned to reconvene to discuss the Irish. Notre Dame, by the way, is 5-0 and preseason national player of the year Luke Harangody is averaging 27.2 points and 10.4 rebounds per game. You don't even want to foul that horse because he's 37 of 41 at the foul line.

3) Drew Crawford looked like a veteran tonight. Liberty's weird zone-like defense rewarded teams that whipped the ball around quickly, so Crawford found himself open in the corner frequently...and the Flames didn't exactly rush out to deny him because they preferred he shoot the ball rather than Juice or Shurna or Nash or Marcotullio.

4) Kyle Rowley started for the first time this season...and it looks like that's going to be how it works for the foreseeable future. The coaches think it benefits Luka Mirkovic to start on the bench and get a feel for the game's flow. Their final numbers? Rowley had 8 points and 2 boards in 18 minutes while Mirk had 6 points and 4 rebounds in 15 minutes.

The 7-foot, 280-ish pound Rowley also drew what I thought to be smiles from the NU bench when he grunted loudly while trying to take a charge from skinny freshman guard Evan Gordon (the brother of former Indiana stud Eric Gordon). Later in the game, Liberty guard Jesse Sanders didn't make so much as a peep when Rowley plowed him into the basket standard as the runaway train tried to finish while trailing on the break.

5) This game should've been a lot closer. After Liberty hit just 1 of 10 3-pointers in the first half, Carmody claimed 8 of them were good looks that could've gone down. If I were Carmody, I'd be more concerned about all the open layups that Liberty had (and missed). The Flames kept blowing past the Wildcats on the drive...and they didn't rotate well to stop guys from cutting open to the basket.

6) Jeremy Nash put up a solid statline in his team-high 36 minutes: 7 points, 7 assists, 3 steals, 1 block. As a squad, the Cats earned 22 assists on 27 baskets.

7) Next up? 7:30 p.m. Friday against Notre Dame at UIC Pavilion.

LW