History says bad matchup for Wildcats

As the 11th seed in the Big Ten tournament, Northwestern has no right to complain about the way the pairings fall.

But regular-season results suggest the Wildcats would have been a lot better off with a first-round game against any of the top five seeds.

NU battled well into the second half at least once with Big Ten champ Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Michigan State and Ohio State.

But against sixth-seeded Minnesota, which Northwestern faces at approximately 4 p.m. Thursday in Big Ten tournament first-round play? The Wildcats were virtually helpless.

Minnesota romped by 19 points at home in January, then proved it wasn't a fluke with a 20-point smackdown at Welsh-Ryan Arena in February.

The Gophers averaged 87 against NU because they made 53 percent of their shots from the field, including 48 percent from 3-point range.

Gophers center Spencer Tollackson, for example, has shot 12-for-13 against the undersized Wildcats.

"Any big man scares us because we don't have a big man," said NU junior guard Craig Moore.

And did we mention Minnesota (18-12) outrebounded Northwestern by 18 boards per regular-season meeting?

"It's always a concern for us when we're facing a physical team," sophomore forward Kevin Coble said. "Especially with Spencer down there, it's something we're going to have to look at on our scouting report and make sure that he doesn't affect the game."

"To be honest, I think it's been miscues on defense," Moore said. "It hasn't been what they've run so much as we've made mistakes. They've capitalized more so than other teams."

While this appears to be the classic case of an unfortunate matchup, Northwestern (8-21, 1-17) isn't showing up in Indianapolis just to fulfill a television deal.

After all, Minnesota lost five of its last eight games and Northwestern could easily be coming into this with a split of its last six regular-season games.

"I think you just have to look through the season," Coble said, "and try to glean some of the positive things that we've gotten.

"It's tough. It's very frustrating to have those games that we let get away, to have games that were right there and then it runs off.

"The Purdue game here, Indiana was especially rough, at Iowa -- those type of things when you feel you're in the games and you're playing well and you still don't get the win.

"So you have to take that (1-17 league) record with a grain of salt, I think, and that's what we're trying to do."