Northwestern at Purdue pregame analysis

And so it begins. Northwestern (9-1) travels to West Lafayette to take on the Purdue Boilermakers (12-1) tomorrow night at 11AM central. ESPN2 and WGN have the call. The Boilers are a perfect 7-0 at Mackey but have yet to play any team of significance over there. Meanwhile Northwestern is 2-1 on the road which includes two wins against cream puffs and a loss to what appears to be a strong St John's squad. The Broilers are ranked #12 by the writers and #11 by the coaches. Northwestern is barely hanging on to the list of "others receiving votes."

This game is a study of contrasts. Purdue is known for its solid defense while Northwestern is known for its prolific offense. On the other side of the court Purdue's offense has been sluggish while Northwestern's defense has been mediocre at best. So it will be strength against strength in tomorrow night's game.

On the bright side Carmody's cagers have matched up well against Painter's playas in recent history. Northwestern won the match up in the Welsh last year and won down at Mackey the year before. Purdue did manage to eke out a win in the other game two years ago at the Welsh, but Northwestern had a big second half lead even there before inexperience reared its ugly head. Like this year Northwestern was a big underdog in both of those NU wins so the uphill battle this year may not be as daunting as it may appear on the surface.

On the dark side defense tends to trump offense when push comes to shove. The more pushing and shoving the refs allow in this game the more tilted in Purdue's favor it becomes. Also of concern is the status of John Shurna and JerShon Cobb. If either and/or both are not up to full speed this could very well be an ugly loss guys and girls.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that Johnny and JerShon are ready to go as a win tomorrow night would be a nice feather in our cap and a great way to start off a tough stretch to begin the Big Ten season.

Magic number update: 11

Carmody Court 2.0 is here!

Drop the balloons and confetti Danny-boy. And be sure to check your ticket stubs as you may be our lucky 1 millionth customer and winner of our "mystery prize." OK whom are we kidding? 10 thousandth customer (and we'll pretend we're Italy and we just lumped off some zeros).

Anywho Santa brought the new and improved Carmody Court 2.0 with some shiny new links including the ever-so-entertaining bracket matrix and the massey compendium o' college basketball rankings. Go ahead and click through to these collections of the outputs of computer geeks with a college basketball habit the world over. That way our sponsors will be sure to give us a nice firm handshake and an attaboy.

No but wait there's more! If you call within the next 30 minutues we will throw in a WHOLE NEW list of links for your browsing pleasure. Just below the indispensable Northwestern basketball links is a list of popular (and free) big ten basketball message board links from all across the interwebs. These links should be quite handy for those of you Carmody Courters who wish to check out the pregame banter and maybe add a cent or two of your own. Or better yet these links are at the ready for some gratuitous schadenfreudening to watch incensed fringe fans meltdown where their alma mater u loses a game to a perceived little sister's of the poor jv squad.

For instance check out Indiana's peegs message board right now. That is some prime schadenfreudening in the wake of a home loss to lowly penn state. Patience is wearing thin in the third year of the Tom Crean regime for this once proud blue blood of a program. Battle lines are drawn between the irrational win-now-because-we-are-IU-chest-thumpers and the see-the-forest-through-the-trees-kumbaya-apologists. Mmmmm.... popcorn!

Call now! Operators are standing by.

Nice Sobolewski interview

Props for a nice bit on Sobolewski from scout's new Northwestern athletics webmeister, Chris Emma. He's really trying to revive that website which is nice for all of us junkies!

Pre-conference slate big ten power rankings

Penn state and Indiana get conference play kicked off tonight in Bloomington. Today is also beauty pageant day for the coaches and writers so we don't want to be left out of the pontification party.

1. Ohio state. Only undefeated team. Columbus/Philly: "evan turner who?" (no change)
2. Wisconsin. Steady as she goes. (+2)
3. Michigan state. Lucas still a step slow. (-1)
4. Purdue. Bumped thanks to others' missteps. Painter's nemesis coming to town 12/31. (+2)
5. Minnesota. Al Nolen is back. Is he really a difference maker? (+2)
6. Northwestern. The "five hole." (-1)
7. Illinois. Ugly meltdowns against Chicago's horizon team and Mizzou. (-4)
8. Michigan. Solid D. (+1)
9. Indiana. 2 game losing streak and no wins of consequence. (-1)
10. Iowa. No terrible losses. (+1)
11. Penn state. 2 game losing streak on heels of narrow win over the mount. (-1)

Holiday festival aftermath

We ain't gonna sugarcoat it. That was a disturbing loss at the garden. The second half looked like the johnnies and wildcats did their best hot knives and butter impressions respectively.

Still it was just one bad half that exposed some flaws in Northwestern's team. These flaws are not (or should not be) a surprise to us or anyone who follows this team let alone the collection of quality coaches within the big ten. Will big ten teams be able to follow lavin's blueprint for success and exploit nu's flaws as well as the johnnies did in the second half? Some will be able to but others will not.

NU isn't invincible and without some warts. Even the most wildly optimistic fans knew this. Nu has the makings of a tourney team, and one bad half isn't going to change that. So show some spine and buck up chicken littles.

Cats rough up the terriers

Ouch! Even we think that is an awful homophone. Deal with it.

This team continues to do what good teams do. We'll let other sing the praises of drew crawford, john shurna, and juice thompson.

We have more important business. WTF is this image, and why is it being used by yahoo for nu games?


Nu is pretty weak at branding (e.g., this icon. and exactly how many different shades of purple do we need to have at the welsh) considering it has the #1 marketing school in all the land.

One other thing: nu's (8-0) magic number is now 12.

Wag of the finger

for the big ten geeks. They are already saying that nu will not make the big dance. They contend that because of a weak rpi that 10-8 in conference may not be enough. Come on. That would get nu to 21-8 before the big ten tournament. That would get nu in the upper half of the big ten. The very same big ten they led off with being the #1 conference. Talk about logical inconsistencies!

Illwhini - Sean Morris edition

Anyone who has spent any time around Illinois fans knows full well that they are prone to complaining about anything and everything. I don't think the illini have ever lost a game fair and square in their minds. It's always xyz's fault.

In the wake of the humiliating loss to the UIC flamers poor old Sean Morris in the cross hairs.

Check this thread out then look around. Some good schadenfreudeing out there right about now!

Chicago's unofficial big ten team goes down

No. Not Northwestern. The illwhini just lost to their little brother UIC. At the united center. The illini home away from home. That just took some shine off the big ten and our win down in shampoo-banana next month.

Thanks for nothing losers. BOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Northwestern's longest winning streak...

to start the season since 9-0 in 1993/94." blah blah blah.

Anyone else getting tired of reading/hearing this line during/after every game? Same here. Ever wonder what the press will write when NU is sitting at 10-0 this Thursday evening? Don't worry we got your back and dusted off the archives.

In 1982-83 nu started with a 9 game winning streak which ended in the Nike Classic against UCSB that was located in (yep) Santa Barbara. So that may get a minor footnote during/after the Holiday Classic title game.

To find an even longer streak to start the season we have to go all the way back to nu's 1930-31 national championship team coached by Arthur Lonborg that started the season 12-0 en route to a 16-1 record. We actually look forward to those references.

In the unlikely event that nu starts the season 12-0 (which would include victories at purdue and against Michigan state at the welsh) then there'd be a historic tussle down in shampoo-banana against what should be a decently ranked illwhini squad with nu's record books on the line for this semi-irrelevant statistic.

So there you have it. Now you can rest easy knowing what lays ahead for journalists looking for something clever to say about our intrepid cagers.

For the record

Nu will make the NCAAs this year. Yeah we said it. Nope you can't blame us if it don't happen.

As we watched the wildcats dismantle an american squad primed and intent on heading back to capital city usa with a big ten roadie scalp it became apparent that nu has all the makings of an NCAA squad. This was a game as recently as last year that nu might have struggled to win and could very easily have lost. To see this team come together and put the game on ice midway through the second half was an epiphany.

We've watched a ton of college basketball over the years and we know good basketball when we see it. Nu is a good basketball team. This team has un je-ne-sais-quoi about it that exudes the look of an NCAA-caliber squad. Why?

Maybe it's our senior point guard who can do any number of things to help his team win.
Maybe it's our star player who will drop 20+ points in a blink of an eye if not game planned against.
Maybe it's a team stocked with role players who can knock down open shots.
Maybe it's the calmness and quiet confidence that they will prevail even when things aren't going perfectly.
Maybe it's the ability to bury an opponent at a moment's notice.
Maybe it's the beauty of this offense that takes exactly what is given to it.
Maybe it's the enthusiasm and togetherness that is abundantly obvious by how everyone is cheering each other on and juice hip bumping guys on the end of the bench when getting a hoop and the harm.
Maybe it's the team consistently winning handily against weaker opponents as all good teams do.

Or maybe it's the combination of all these things. We can't put a finger on exactly why we know this team is going to end the drought. We just know they will. And we will enjoy every last minute of this long overdue ride.

Nu 78 American 62

OK let's first get a little business out of the way before we get into the game. Yes we meant to write 411 when we typed 911 on our pregame post. But since it got a rise out of a record number carmodycourters we think we've serendipitously stumbled upon something special. Be on the lookout for a 911 information post in the near future on a blog near you.

As for the game most of the bloggers/beat writers/message board denizens have already hit upon our two cents. Among those ideas that didn't see daylight early enough for us to lay down our flag and claim as our original ideas are:

* American was a pretty good team and better than anticipated. They were more than the one man vlad show and were quite competitive in the first half. Hence this was a very respectable win for nu.

* The 1-3-1 was noticeably absent which is good thing considering we need to develop a viable secondary defense when teams have the 1-3-1 solve (yes we are looking right at you ed dechellis)

* Nu's game plan was to make the vlad man uncomfortable. During the pivotal stretch of the game vlad was invisible out there.

* Juice is looking the part of veteran senior guard who are vital to teams that make it into and move on in the NCAAs.

* Shurna is very very good and getting better. Wow! That leaner when he got the conventional 3 point play after getting hammered to the ground was stupendous. That desperation heave from near half court to beat the shot clock that went in displayed skill and awareness. While not the fleetest of foot on defense Johnny does keep his head on a swivel which helps to force turnovers.

* The game was settled during a pivotal 3 minute stretch midway through the second half in which nu went a 13-0 run that stretched a competitive 7 point game into a 20 point yawning gap. Yes clark kellogg we's gots spurtability in spadez.

* Drew Crawford couldn't get free. At least he didn't force shots. We imagine he'll have some heady games when teams decide to help on johnny shurna and sag off him. He just needs a little daylight to make teams pay.

* Cobb had a rather unremarkable game and still exhibits excitability. Yes he's still a frosh. Good news is that things will really be sinking in for him by the time we debut in the NCAAs!

* Luka had a good game and was dogged on the boards. Keep it up big fella.

Nu is now 7-0 and gaining in national profile. Magic number: 13

The 911 on the vlighting vlads

So we set out our cracker jack interns to learn more about our next opponent. As we suspected the name american u is a farce. The school is located in the nation's capital which as most americans know is about as far removed from your average joe america as timbuktu. Apple pie? Try freedom fries. Chevrolets? Maybe some months ago but GM just went all IPO on uncle Sam! Baseball? The gnats make the flubbies look like the yanks (with cliff lee OOPS!). Hot dogs? OK maybe that one has DC written all over it. But a .250 batting average won't pass muster. Unless we're still talking about the gnats.

Also as we suspected the american eagles as they are known are a one man band headlined by our friend vlad moldoveanu. And yes it turns out the scoring machine is Romanian which to our surprise is not home to the old gladiator coliseum (Maximus! Maximus! Maximus!). No, Romania is a country best known for its vampires and gypsies. Some people get it confused with Hungary as their capital cities are so close in name and both lie on the banks of the blue donau. Oh and evil dictators and passing grounds for great armies of yore are other Romania claims to fame.

But onto this vlad dude. The guy went to a high school called St John's College High School. WTF is up with that? I bet they really churn out the national merit scholars at that bastion of higher learning. Aside being afflicted by premature balding vlad seems like a good guy whose english is much better than we had expected. But don't take our word for it: check this out

Ffow update of the week

Former flavor of the week craig robinson was once held out as an example of someone who could do a better job than bill carmody. evidence was his rapid rise from shackled nu assistant to brown coach to rising oregon state megastar coach. What's more was that his sister was married to the hottest political entity the world over. How could nu not succeed with this juggernaut at the helm?

Robinson is now in his third season with the beavers and sit at an admirable 4-5 after nearly gutting out a victory over the wunderkinds from Montana U. Alas not even craig's dynamic leadership could overcome this herculean task and the beavers ultimately succumbed 66-71.

Oh what could have been. We are wistful that henry bienen et al didn't heed the wise words of those who were singing mr robinson's tune.

FoB of the week: massey

This week's Friend of the Blog is massey ratings. Not only do these good folks perform yeoman's work throughout the year compiling compendia of the various college basketball (and college football) rankings scattered across the interwebs but also they have what in our view (for the moment) is a vastly superior ranking system of their own for college basketball.

You see massey in its infinite wisdom sees nu basketball as the 34th best program in all the land whereas those curmudgeons over at kenpom have nu in the low 50s not to mention the glue sniffing mcpaper loving losers over at sagarin who have nu in the low 70s. Massey agrees with the infallible good sports journalists and coaches who have nu ranked in the low- to mid- 30s as well.

But that's just the tip(off) of the iceberg. Massey have also broken their way into the prediction stranglehold that kenpom has recklessly and carelessly wielded upon the masses for years. The beacons of light at massey predict nu to go a sterling 20-8 on the year including a 10-8 mark in the big ten. We can forgive them for not just handing us the second msg game because computers are built that way. 21-8 before the big ten tourney has a nice ring to it.

In contrast those naysayers over at kenpom have nu going 5-13 in conference. Say what? They must have the keys to the walgreens pharmacy to gather the nerve to publish such nonsense. Pretty much the only big ten team that massey gives nu a lower chance of beating than does kenpom are the mighty michiganders. Michigan has raised some eyebrows over here at carmodycourt so we can't really quibble too much with this minor oversight by massey et al.

Nu 81 long island 65

Nu led throughout. With teams as good as nu is this year games like this are not much more than a nice little scrimmage which are pretty boring for all but the real hoop heads. Best hope for games like this is for nu to work on some stuff on defense and try to get some subs some time. Oh and no injuries.

Nu did work on its matchup zone but hard to tell much against an inferior and undersized opponent. Nu got subs some time thanks to the ref's whistle. It was ugly when juice sat. No wonder he plays 40 minutes when the games mean something. And certainly last but not least is the best thing about the game: no one got hurt.

kenpom.com watch: predicted score nu 84 liu 67. Pretty darn good if you ask us.

Nu's magic number: 14

Analyzing conference play

Nu must take care of business in the non-conference still. Now that we have a better feel for our conference foes we think it's a good time to look ahead to what lays ahead next year.

To get out the dancing shoes in our estimation nu will need to go 9-9 in conference now that the big ten’s grip status as top dog conference appears to be slipping. Below we organize nu’s conference games into four categories: egg, low hanging fruit, bling, and Wheaties games.

Egg
“Egg games” are those in which NU is currently favored (per kenpom.com). As any follower of nu basketball knows it is dangerous to count these as wins before they hatch, and a loss in any of these games would be the proverbial egg on the face. There are five conference games against the projected lower tier big ten teams at the welsh which fall into this category:

Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, penn state, Minnesota

If all goes to plan (it won’t) and nu wins these conference games as expected but no other conference games then the big dance dreams will once again be put on hold. So where will the other wins most likely come from?

Low hanging fruit
Three away games against the projected lower tier big ten teams are the most obvious candidates for nu upset wins. Nothing extraordinary would be needed to win them. Just get into that tree and pick the fruit hanging within reach. These three games are:

at Iowa, at Michigan, at penn state.

Grab all of the low hanging fruit (won’t happen) on top of all the egg games and nu would sit at eight conference wins with zero no resume building “good wins.” That’s still not good enough.

Bling
There are four games that have potential to be resume builders, games that nu could win and then show them off as bling to the ncaa tournament selection committee. To be sure in order to win these games nu will need to play close to its full potential. An nu win would raise some eyebrows and garner attention in the beauty pageant polls, but they would not be headline grabbing wins.

Michigan state, Wisconsin and Illinois at the welsh, Indiana at assembly hall.

In our estimation we will need to grab two of these four bling.

Wheaties
The remaining six conference games look beyond reach on paper. As the old slogan goes nu better eat its Wheaties before these games if they hope to win.

Purdue at mackey, Minnesota at the barn, Michigan state at breslin, Ohio state at the welsh, Illinois at assembly, Wisconsin at kohl.

Though all of these Wheaties games are real stretches, nu has proven capable of winning one or two of these games over the past couple of years. We’d be willing to bet this trend continues.

Summary
So our best guess as to what will play out:

Egg 4-1
Low Hanging Fruit 2-1
Bling 2-2
Wheaties 1-5
Overall 9-9

That’s one bad loss, one great win, and two tourney building games. Go undefeated or lose one game in the non-conference combined with a first round win in the big ten tourney. Add it all up and it’s 20+ wins and an invite to a first round ncaa game.

Trip down memory lane

Nu 70 msu 63
Jan 21 2009
Breslin center

http://nusports.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/012109aab.html

Why bring it up? If lorretta8 of sippin on purple feels compelled to revisit the "low point" of the carmody era in narrowly defeating wheaton college then feng shui compels us to bring things back into balance by looking at the high point. Or are we thinking of yin and yang?

Filling the lull with kenpom statistics

As most students--including our true student-athletes who are glorified on this blog--are busy cramming for final exams because they did not have the foresight/were too lazy to opt for the final paper option, we at carmody court are here to fill the void with some early statistical analysis. Courtesy of kenpom:

Nu is currently #11 in the nation in offense efficiency and #131 in defense efficiency. Offense is an improvement of 22 spots over last year's impressive #33 offense. So what was already a strength looks to be even stronger.

However pretty much everyone who follows nu basketball knows that the key to making the big dance this year is to improvement on defense. The early returns are a good news/bad news kinda deal. The good news is that nu is improved over last year on the order of 38 spots. The bad news is that this is tempered by the fact that nu has played the 316th easiest schedule (out of 360 some odd programs). So any conclusions are tentative at best and subject to change once the schedule bumps up in degree of difficulty (no duh!).

Since defense is so important we decided to delve a little more deeply into the improvement to date. kenpom uses "four factors" when computing defense efficiency. The area of greatest improvement amongst these factors is offense rebounding percentage (or in this context, nu's defensive rebounding percentage). Last year nu was a subpar #216 in this statistic while this year nu is at a very respectable #41. That kind of improvement is clearly colored by strength of schedule as these kinds of leaps simply don't happen for teams that have really only one major change to the roster (cobb for nash, ok jeff ryan added to the mix is another change). four of the five opponents so far are abysmal at offensive rebounds. only ga tech is good at crashing the offensive boards.

Nearly as great an area of improvement is FTA/FGA which improved from a dismal #256 to a respectable #86. So NU is no longer foul prone. We shall see if that continues as the level of athletes improves. Again ga tech not withstanding.

Turnover percentage has improved slightly from #161 to #130. No big revelation here.

The biggest red flag that we see is that effective field goal percentage has actually grown worse from a so-so #143 ranking to a lowly #213 ranking (50.o% efg%). Against this lowly competition? Not good.

So we have an overall improvement on defense but really can't put much stock in it due to the competition. What's worse is that we are letting bad teams shoot the heck out of the ball. The good news is that there should be some offensive shows at the welsh this year. The bad news is there is reason to think that the defense may once again be this team's Achilles heel.

NU ranked #31/#34

Polls were just released. Coaches have nu ranked #31, writers #34. We were actually hoping for higher but results not surprising given where we started (off the radar).

Win the tourney at msg and top 25 is within sight.

We're number 24

We got all excited about the Yahoo! User Rankings when we saw Northwestern listed at #24. Then it dawned on us that this is totally manipulated by losers like mizzou and domer fans who have nothing better to do than inflate their team rankings on some meaningless poll. Real men of genius.......

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/polls

On jershon cobb and last thoughts on the tech game

The kid got game, but he is a typical freshman who regularly exhibits poor decision making. This is most apparent when he handles the ball against pressure, his passing in general, and he doesn't know how closely he can push the envelope on defense without fouling.

We have confidence that he will grow out of these problem areas as he gets acclimated to major college ball. He will be a nice complement to drew crawford for the next few years.

Just a couple of additional thoughts about the tech game before we promise to move on. First, what the heck were the starters doing in the game up by 25 with 5 minutes to play. Second, shumpert had an off game for him but it is clear that he is a baller.

Juice Thompson a dirty player?

There was some mild hullabaloo made about some poll that showed juice's peers rated him the dirtiest player in the big ten. We have to be honest--we never thought of juice as a dirty player, but we just filed away that nugget to see if there was much basis to that assertion.

Well ladies and gents let's go to the videotape (or dvr/TiVo if you want to go all 21st century). Check out the 12:30 mark of the second half. On a seemingly innocuous play that resulted in a tech foul, just prior to the foul juice gave iman shumpert a not-so-gentle two handed shove that would make our football ol proud. Shumpert went flying back a few feet and then had this quizzical look on his face after the whistle blew on his teammate of all people.

There were another couple of instances of push offs, but really the only other excessive looking one occurred in the first half on a clear out for a shurna three. Juice did hit the ground as he shoved shumpert so maybe he tripped. We do find it curious that shumpert was on the business end of two Thompson hard shoves. Maybe juice took it personally that shumpert, who is a class behind juice, didn't think nu had enough talent to commit to nu. Dunno.

The one play that possibly be dirty was near the very end of the first half where the ball bounded out and juice hit the floor with a tech big. It was pretty hard to tell if juice gave a little extra oomph to push the techie into the floor but there wasn't exactly any love lost between the two as they picked themselves up off the floor.

Dirty? That seems a bit much. We'd call it crafty. Check that. Let's call it wily which sounds more befitting for a northwestern player.

Interesting kenpom factoids

According to kenpom.com five big ten teams are in the top 25 of adjusted offensive efficiency and five are in the top 25 of adjusted defensive efficiency. four big ten teams are in the top 25 of both categories (ohio state, michigan state, illinois, wisconsin).

Despite getting shellacked by northwestern's prolific offense Georgia tech's defense is still in the top 50. I wonder how high they were before nu scored at will against them.

Blog maintenance

Thank you "whiskers" for pointing out that our sagarin link was out of date. It has been updated. The rest of you in carmody court nation are welcome/encouraged to drop us a line to let us know if we are negligent in our upkeep of this blog.

Shurna atop big ten in scoring

and tied for 13th in the nation at 22.4 ppg. as a mildly interesting side note johnny shurna is tied with vlad moldoveanu who has been tearing up the nets at american university in capital city usa. three thoughts come to mind:

1. vlad. cool name. i checked and it's not in the top 1,000 american baby names so i'll go out on a limb and guess he ain't from the usa.
2. moldoveanu. so where is he from? moldova? naw. too obvious. my guess is romania just because that romanian dictator's last name ended with a u (i'm no history major, and i'm too lazy to google the dude's name)
3. who will win the scoring battle when vlad makes his way to evanston? will he pull a xavier silas and pad the stats in garbage time against the end of our bench?

Post Big Ten-ACC Challenge Power Rankings

The nice thing about the challenge is that it is a good chance to see where all the Big Ten teams are currently at...

1. Ohio state. Awesome on both ends of court (+1 from preseason ranking)
2. Michigan state. #2 already? Sparty is well ahead of pace which a scary thought (-1)
3. Illinois. Impressive game all around against the tarholes (+2)
4. Wisconsin. One word: defense (no change)
5. Northwestern. One word: offense (+1)
6. Purdue. Some say that was good defense against VT; we say it was middling basketball (-3)
7. Minnesota. Not a bad team, but Big Ten is STACKED (n/c)
8. Indiana. Ugly loss at BC brings the hosers back to reality (n/c)
9. Michigan. Nice upset win bumps 'em up a notch (+1)
10. Penn state. Ugly loss at home to twerps (-1)
11. Iowa. Someone has to be the caboose (n/c)

Big ten squeaks out 6-5 victory

Ok, msu is currently playing duke with 3 mins to go, but the writing is on the wall. This shoulda been a bigger big ten romp. But...

The gophers shit the bed as previously noted
The hawkeyes are truly bad
The nit wits have only one good player
The hoosiers are still a year away
Sparty can't protect the rock

It took Purdue to salvage this challenge with a rather fortunate ot win at vatech. Yuck.

Most impressive were nu, illini, badgers, and Osu in their victories. Michigan surprised on the road, but Clemson was just being Clemson, new coach same as the old coach...

Nu wrecks tech, internets abuzz

As snowflakes fell through the crisp Evanston evening the snowballernaut that is nu basketball picked up significant momentum courtesy of a typically clueless Georgia tech squad. 55 sweet points rained down through the nets off nu hands in a first half like none seen before under sir carmodys steady hand. The rout was on with the stingless yellow jackets never able to close the gap to single digits in the second half.

Garbage time against an acc opponent. Final score 91-71? This is what uncharted waters look like nu fans. Enjoy the ride all the way to selection Sunday!

Magic number: 15