Cats confound Carmody in costly setback at Iowa

Maybe Northwestern suddenly believed that the NCAA Tournament committee prefers teams that don't play defense and ignore scouting reports.

That's the only possible explanation for the Wildcats' 78-65 Big Ten loss at 10th-place Iowa on Wednesday night.

Northwestern (16-8, 5-7), which needed a win to remain a viable NCAA Tournament at-large candidate, fell behind 10-2 in the opening four minutes and never got closer than 5 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

"It's hard to understand," Northwestern coach Bill Carmody said on his postgame radio show. "You put yourself in a position where maybe you're going to compete and do something - and we come out as flat as we did."

Starting with the game's first possession, when NU left Matt Gatens open for a 3-pointer, the Wildcats didn't do things right.

"The first play, we're saying, 'Don't go under (the screen) on Gatens,' " Carmody said. "That's the first thing we did. We went under the screen. It's just crazy."

Iowa's 78 points represented its Big Ten high since Todd Lickliter took over the program three years ago. The Hawkeyes drilled 12 of 24 3-pointers as they led by as much as 18.

"All the things in the scouting report that we worked on the last couple days," Carmody said, "it's almost as if they didn't hear any of it."

Particularly when it came to the scoop on senior guard Devan Bawinkel from Winnebago. The Hawks' sixth man entered the night with 68 field-goal attempts, all of them beyond the 3-point arc.

Nonetheless, Northwestern left Bawinkel open time and again on the perimeter. He drilled 5 of 8 3-pointers for the night and finished with 15 points when he hadn't made more than three 3s and scored more than 11 points in a game all season.

"We didn't stop them at all the whole night," Carmody said. "The guys that make shots were open. It said on the scouting report, don't give this guy Bawinkel any shots from the corner. So we're (guarding) guys that can't shoot and he's left to shoot."

Junior point guard Michael Thompson paced Northwestern with 20 points and John Shurna added 16, but the Wildcats didn't win anything on the stat sheet.

Iowa (9-16, 3-9) outrebounded the Wildcats by 8, outshot the visitors 50 percent to 44 percent, and turned over the ball just eight times.

"They were more physical than we were," Carmody said. "They outcompeted us, and that's disappointing."

Northwestern was conspicuously weak in the post as Carmody tried four players in an ill-fated attempt to find someone who would produce.