Naperville's Crawford rallies Northwestern past Michigan 68-62
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Drew Crawford is taking Northwestern to another level.
Crawford scored 25 points and made go-ahead free throws with 1:14 left, lifting the Wildcats to a 68-62 win over Michigan on Sunday.
Northwestern rallied from a 17-point, first-half deficit and led by 10 midway through the second half.
Crawford started the comeback by going on an 11-0 run by himself.
"It was major," coach Bill Carmody said. "It took a freshman to get the older guys confident. He infused the rest of the guys."
The Wildcats (12-3, 1-2 Big Ten) are off to their best 15-game start since the 1945-46 season and were recently ranked for the first time in four decades.
"There hasn't been a rich tradition of success at Northwestern, so you break a lot of records," Carmody said. "We want more than that. We've got Wisconsin and Purdue coming.
"It was great that we were ranked because that was an accomplishment, but we need to keep going."
Crawford gives them a shot to do that.
The freshman guard from Naperville was 7-of-9 -- making four 3-pointers -- and made seven free throws.
"They've never had athletes like Crawford," Michigan coach John Beilein said.
Beilein was expected to win big this season, getting ranked No. 15 in the preseason.
The Wolverines generated excitement with upperclassmen standouts Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims among its top six scorers back from last season's team that earned Michigan's first NCAA tournament bid since 1998.
The Wolverines (8-7, 2-2) have struggled, though, in part because they lack chemistry.
"When things are going south, the leadership has to come from more than just me," Beilein said. "There has to be positive stuff from people within this team.
"It's tough to change people's personalities sometimes, but we'll work at it."
Harris scored 24 and Sims had 17 points while making more than half of their attempts. Their teammates connected on fewer than one-third of their shots and none of them scored more than seven points.
"We know we have a good team," Harris said. "We just lose focus at times and everyone's got to be focused.
"We've definitely got a lot of hope with this team. We still feel we can make it to the (NCAA) tournament."
Michigan responded to its collapse against Northwestern with a 13-2 run to go ahead with 1:28 left, then gave up the last seven points of the game.
"This one is going to hurt for the next two days," Sims said. "But we're just going to have to get past it, and take the good and bad from it and move on to Indiana."
Michael Thompson had 15 points, Luka Mirkovic scored 13 and John Shurna added 11 for Northwestern in its first Big Ten win.
"This win gives me a great deal of confidence as well as my teammates," Thompson said. "We finally got a win in the conference, so it just gives us a lot of momentum for our game Wednesday against Wisconsin."
Michigan showed some of its potential in the first half, going on a 20-5 run to take a 31-14 lead.
Then, the Wolverines let Crawford score 11 straight points -- nine on 3-pointers.
"Drew bailed us out," said Shurna, who had scored 20-plus points in the previous five games. "He hit a bunch of big 3s for us.
"Then the next thing you know we had some momentum on defense. We were getting some pressure, getting some turnovers."