Men's Basketball: Offensive depth spurs Cats' upset win

In sickness and in health, Northwestern can rely on junior forward Drew Crawford and senior forward John Shurna. The issue has always been finding someone else to contribute.

In Saturday's upset of No. 6 Michigan State, NU had four players in double figures, including 17 points from senior center Davide Curletti in his second career start. The secondary scoring helped propel the Wildcats to victory, something that was lacking in losses to Illinois and then-No. 13 Michigan.

"One thing that's big with us is playing together as a team," Crawford said. "When we really have all five guys playing hard and we're playing together and we're running our offense fluidly and having the team defense too, we're really hard to beat."

With Crawford battling the flu for the last two days, coach Bill Carmody elected to go with Curletti over his senior counterpart Luka Mirkovic.

Carmody said the original plan was to start the game with the same small lineup that started against the Wolverines on Wednesday. Curletti took full advantage of his opportunity, playing 36 minutes while contributing 17 points and six rebounds.

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo was so impressed with Curletti's play that he deemed him the game's most valuable player. He was especially impressed with the senior's three offensive rebounds, which he stole out of the hands of Spartans defenders and translated into six points for the Cats.

"Curletti was the difference in the game," Izzo said. "He outplayed our centers and that's been something we've been pretty solid on lately. He's the one that snagged those (rebounds) early when we had them and he took them and he scored on them."

NU's junior guard Reggie Hearn was also in double figures. He had 10 points, five rebounds and two assists. Hearn's most notable play was a tipped pass he directed toward Shurna, who streaked in for a two-handed slam. The play got the capacity crowd at Welsh-Ryan Arena riled up and pushed the Cats' lead to 10 points.

Although Hearn did not fill up the stat sheet, he did leave a good impression on his coach. Carmody said Hearn was making the big plays at the crucial moments, which helped push NU to victory.

"Reggie Hearn doesn't get mentioned enough," Carmody said. "I don't know the stats, but he just seemed to get big defensive rebounds (and) he had a big tip-in."

Alex Marcotullio also assumed a large role in the Cats' win. The junior guard only played 15 minutes due to a concussion, but finished with six points on two game-changing three-pointers. The first shot was the exclamation point of a first-half comeback for NU, which battled back from nine-points down with nine minutes and 17 seconds to go to tie the game on the Marcotullio three. Just 27 seconds later, Marcotullio hit his other three-pointer to give the Cats the lead for the first time since the opening 90 seconds of the game.

"In the first half, Alex had a nice stretch there," Carmody said. "He hit a couple of rainbow threes out of the corner and he made a couple of nice passes."

The rest of the team helped keep the Cats in the game early when Shurna was not doing much. The senior forward had just one field goal in the first 19 minutes and 57 seconds of the game, but NU did not allow Michigan State to extend its lead past nine points. Of the 39 points NU scored in the first half, 21 of them were not from Crawford or Shurna, NU's go-to duo.

Carmody said he was "happy" and "proud" of how his team responded to the tough losses of the last week. He said the team came together and played as a unit, which is why NU was able to pull off the upset.

"It was a really good team effort against a very good team," Carmody said. "We played a nice game all around."

joshuawalfish2014@u.northwestern.edu