Northwestern State Preview
March 18, 2006 07:55 PM | General
March 18, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Northwestern State coach Mike McConathy admitted Saturday that it took him a few moments to fully comprehend what his basketball team had done a day earlier, knocking off No. 3-seeded Iowa on a last-second shot by Jermaine Wallace.
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| John Beilein talks to reporters during Saturday's afternoon press conference at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“I looked up and I saw that all of the seats in The Palace were purple so I thought I was at home,” he said.
Home for McConathy is in Natchitoches, La. (pop. 18,000), about 275 miles northwest of New Orleans. Northwestern State (enrollment 10,000) has had its best season of basketball in 30 years of Division I play this year, knocking off Mississippi State, Oklahoma State and Oregon State during its non-conference season and then winning the Southland Conference tournament championship by beating Sam Houston State, 95-87.
Northwestern State’s seven losses this year have come against Missouri, Wichita State, Iowa State, Hawaii, Texas A&M and Sam Houston State.
To give you an idea of the type of schedule Northwestern State has played, Wichita State has already advanced to the “Sweet 16” and Texas A&M knocked off Syracuse on Thursday to get to the NCAA tournament second round. A scorer’s error kept Northwestern State from beating Iowa State in the Rainbow Classic.
Consequently, the Demon’s 64-63 win over Iowa on Friday afternoon was by no means a fluke.
“There are seven of them that are seniors and they’re good – they’re real good,” said West Virginia coach John Beilein.
McConathy, an All-American player at Louisiana Tech in the mid-1970s who came up through the high school and junior college coaching ranks, will employ an 11-man rotation and will often substitute five players at a time. The Demons like to play an up-tempo, pressuring style of basketball.
“They play very much like Villanova who we have had a 45-point loss and a couple of great wins against,” Beilein said. “They really come after you and they come after you in waves.”
“The style we play is the style that we believe we can be competitive with,” McConathy said. “At our level of school you can get some good athletes that can play hard and can keep the intensity level up at a high level then we think we can be competitive against bigger schools.”
Against Big Ten tournament champion Iowa on Friday, Northwestern State was able to hold the Hawkeyes to just 39.1 percent shooting in the first half and 43.9 percent overall for the game. The much smaller Demons were also able to grab 14 offensive rebounds and force 19 Iowa turnovers.
Six-foot-seven-inch forward Clifton Lee scored 18 points and made 4 of 6 from 3-point range to lead the Demons over Iowa. The Royce, La., resident was the MVP of the Southland Conference tournament and has been the team’s top scorer in seven if its last nine games, averaging better than 16 points per game during that stretch.
“It looks to me like they have several Clifton Lees out there,” Beilein said. “It was tough for Iowa to guard him because he is so quick on the perimeter. We hope that we don’t get into those situations where he can expose our defense because he’s a really a small forward where a lot of people have a power forward playing.”
Lee and 6-foot-7-inch, 275-pound center Byron Allen are Northwestern State’s two tallest starters, although the Demons bring 6-foot-10-inch center Alfonso Dyer off the bench. He is averaging 4.9 points and 3.1 rebounds per game.
Northwestern State plays a three-guard offense with Tyronn Mitchell and Luke Rogers both standing 6-1, and 6-3, 218-pound Jermaine Wallace swinging between the big guard and small forward positions. Wallace hit the difficult 3 from the corner to beat Iowa after entering the tournament on a 7 of 30 shooting slump from 3-point distance in his last five games. Big Kerwin Forges is a 6-foot-4-inch, 255-pound guard-forward who gives the Demons additional size.
“I think Clifton Lee and Kerwin Forges are very good basketball players that understand the game,” said McConathy, who owns a 47-19 record his past two seasons at Northwestern State. “There is a good mixture and a blend of the different things that you need to build a team.”
Beilein says he’s been able to watch about three different tapes of Northwestern State and that should be more than sufficient to get a good scouting report.
“We were able to get enough and you probably don’t need much more than that anyway,” he said. “It isn’t rocket science out there in some ways. You watch it and watch it and pretty soon you get a feel and they’re the same way. I’m sure their not watching 16 of our games – they’re watching three or four and that’s what we’re doing.”
Northwestern State is looking to become the first Southland Conference team to advance to the Round of 16 since Karl Malone led Louisiana Tech to a pair of NCAA tournament victories in 1985.
“When you get to the waning moments of your career right before the lights go down and they get another opportunity to go back out onto the stage to try and keep the lights shining, it’s real special to see that happen to them,” McConathy said. “When they came up here from Louisiana they didn’t come up here with the intentions of being one and done. They really had the belief that they could get it done and we want to continue that.”
Tip off for Sunday’s game is scheduled for approximately 2:40 pm.
