Not enough 'Juice' for Wildcats

A memo to Champaign: There's another Juice emerging on the Illinois college sports scene.

Unfortunately for Northwestern, freshman point guard Michael "Juice" Thompson couldn't summon enough juice to lift his team to an upset Thursday against No. 20 Stanford. Thompson scored a team-high 16 points, all after halftime, but the Wildcats struggled at the end of each half and fell 71-60 in their season opener at Welsh-Ryan Arena.

"If it's a 30-minute game, a lot of teams can stay with Stanford," coach Bill Carmody said. "But if it's 40 minutes, how many can?"

Northwestern evidently couldn't despite Thompson's play and a stifling half-court trap that forced 16 turnovers. After a Thompson backdoor layup cut NU's deficit to 59-56 with 2:56 remaining, the veteran-laden Cardinal (4-0) closed out the win behind guards Anthony Goods (19 points), Landry Fields (16 points) and Mitch Johnson (11 points, 7 assists).

The Wildcats' late lull mirrored the end of the first half, when they managed just 3 points in the final 6:07 after taking a 22-19 lead on a Nikola Baran 3-pointer.

"Our intensity dropped," Thompson said. "We didn't play as hard as we did in the middle of each half."

Thompson did all he could to provide the spark an undermanned NU squad needed. After serving a pass-first purpose in the first half, the 5-10 freshman scored his first basket on a running bank shot with 14:05 left.

He began attacking the rim, putting back his own miss to keep the deficit at 4 points.

"I had to step up my aggressiveness on the offensive end," Thompson said. "Once my energy went up, my whole team's energy went up. That's when we got on our run."

Added Stanford coach Trent Johnson: "We had a hard time keeping him out of the lane."

Thompson's scoring spark allowed Carmody to play five guards after halftime despite Stanford's major size advantage. Not surprisingly, the Cardinal outrebounded NU 45-24 and 7-foot center Robin Lopez blocked 5 shots, but the Wildcats scored more points in the paint (24-22).

Carmody could tweak the offense to feature Thompson more as a scorer.

"This democracy thing of spreading the ball around, we might have to throw that out the window," Carmody said. "For a little guy, he finishes stuff pretty well. We can do some things that can help him. I don't want him to be content to just run things."

Despite Thompson's play, NU still must find ways to finish games and get sustained production. Veteran guards Craig Moore and Jason Okrzesik scored 14 of their combined 17 points in the first half.

"We just seemed to stagnate," Carmody said. "It might have been a game for 30 some minutes, but it's got to be 37 minutes.

"We never got them real nervous."