I have been to a lot of weird games at Welsh Ryan Arena in my day. Nearly all of them involve Northwestern almost beating a good team, then creatively finding a completely novel way to lose, once again.

That was not the case in Evanston on Thursday evening. Playing against the Howard Bison, the Wildcats weirdly dominated. And they did it, while only making six threes.

A Cats player, Jeff Ryan, even dunked!

If Northwestern wants any prayer of winning a big ten game this year, they will need to make at least 3 times that amount of three’s that game.

Their defense actually keyed things up Thursday. Northwestern, as a team, had 18 steals. Looking less like a man far too old to be in college and more like Allen Iverson. Senior Jason Okrzesik led the way with three steals, and aside from the steals, the Cats out-rebounded the Bison by more than double.

The fact the Cats only had eight rebounds sounds much less pathetic knowing Howard somehow only grabbed three rebounds over 40 minutes of play.

Regarding individuals, it is hard to learn too much in a game like this. Blowouts are not real in the sense, that the games have almost no bearing to a close, meaningful game. In a game like this, one almost worries that the Cats might get too confident and develop some lazy habits.

At the end of the day with this team, especially without Koble, a win is a win is a win. Sitting at 5-4, Cats fans have to be happy with what they have seen so far from this squad. No they are not very good, but that was expected. They do play hard and, aside from tonight, can drain the long ball when things go their way.

Overall I still do not know how I feel about coach Bill Carmody, but it has to be nice for him, as this team seems at least to buy into what he’s selling. It seems as though the players are accepting the offense and working with it as opposed to abandoning the Princeton offense as they had previously.

Of course, that all could change 30 seconds into a real team playing real defense against them.

For now, Cat fans should enjoy the win and being above .500 on the season.

There is a small, nearly miniscule percentage chance their record could dip closer to .000 soon.

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