Northwestern arrives, and the Chris Collins era comes full circle, with win at Wisconsin

MADISON, Wis. — Bryant McIntosh knew it wasn’t the right play. He knew one last exclamation point wasn’t necessary. But that knowledge didn’t curtail his celebrations, nor did it inhibit his appreciation of the moment.

McIntosh watched as the Kohl Center clock ticked down under eight seconds alongside a scoreboard that read Northwestern 64, Wisconsin 56. He watched as teammate Sanjay Lumpkin raced down the floor. He knew that the right move was to pull the ball out and enjoy a historic victory.

Then he watched as Lumpkin flew towards the rim. He might have seen Chris Collins, 20 feet away, roaring without restraint, and with shaking fists; neither Collins himself nor his coaching box could contain his joy. And he saw Lumpkin flush the ball through the hoop.

“It’s probably not the right play, but it was a great punctuation,” McIntosh said postgame. “That finished it. It was the dagger.”

Lumpkin had the most simple and understandable reasoning: “I was excited,” he said with a smile, before explaining that he got caught up in the moment.

And can you blame him?

Apparently Wisconsin coach Greg Gard could. He confronted Collins on the sideline after the final horn. Badger assistants had words with Collins too. Some Wisconsin fans were peeved. Act like you’ve been there before, they whined.

Then maybe they thought about that gripe, and realized: Wait; Northwestern hasn’t been here before.

No, they have not. Not if here is outplaying the best team in the Big Ten on the road. Not if here is on the verge of the NCAA tournament.

Lumpkin, ironically, is one of the few Wildcats who had actually been here before, if here is winning in Madison. He, Nathan Taphorn and Collins were here a little over three years ago when Northwestern stunned Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker and the Badgers. Lumpkin played 39 minutes as a freshman in a 65-56 victory.

Collins remembers that night. “I talk about that game because about a month before that was my first Big Ten game as a rookie coach,” Collins recalled. “We were losing 40-14 at halftime [to Wisconsin].” The win a month later in Madison, Collins said, “was kind of the start of our program.”

The line that connects that day to Sunday is anything but linear. A week and a half later, the Wildcats embarked on a seven-game losing streak. There have been countless highs and lows since.

In fact, exactly two years and two days ago, Collins and his staff gathered in Collins’ office and looked out onto an empty practice court. Their shoulders slumped; their heads hung; their collective spirit was depleted. They ordered in, and dissected a deflating 68-44 home loss to Michigan State, the team’s 10th in a row. Then they picked each other up, made on-court and off-court changes, some simply for change’s sake, and subsequently rattled off four wins in a row.

The ups and downs even flowed all the way into this month, when leading scorer Scottie Lindsey came down with an illness and the Wildcats coughed up a game to Illinois at home. Suddenly, tournament hopes that once seemed relatively secure were shrouded in doubt.

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But whereas previous two-game losing streaks under Collins became three, four, five-game slides, this Northwestern team is different.

Before Sunday’s game, as spotlights bounced around the Kohl Center and the names Ethan Happ, Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig boomed out over the public address system, Northwestern players looked on stoically and unfazed.

As music blared and Badger fans settled in for tip-off, Wildcat bench players bobbed up and down, pushed each other around, and turned the sideline into a mini pregame mosh pit — just like they do before every home game.

Then, whenever frustration simmered during the game, whenever a questionable call went against the Wildcats, whenever a play went awry, Collins would clap his hands, or hold them up to urge calm. His players obeyed time and time again.

Northwestern did so many things Sunday like a team that had been there before. It withstood Wisconsin runs at the onset of both halves. It entered Sunday’s game as an 11.5-point underdog; it left as the first team to beat the Badgers at the Kohl Center in over 13 months.

NU doubled and rotated expertly to hold Happ, arguably the Big Ten’s best player, without a field goal over the final 34 minutes. Vic Law, arguably the Big Ten’s best perimeter defender, held Koenig to two points. And McIntosh, who exemplifies the ups and downs of the past few years as well as anybody, went for 25 points, seven rebounds and seven assists.

He also played every single minute. Law would have too if he hadn’t fouled out with 23 seconds remaining. McIntosh asked for a blow midway through the first half, but Collins wasn’t having it. “It’s a TV timeout… do you really need one?” he asked his point guard. There was only one acceptable answer.

Collins’ four years and McIntosh’s three have in part been about patience, but Sunday was about urgency. The substitution patterns were evidence of it. Collins and his players knew that a trip to Madison was a golden opportunity to end two things: the nascent losing streak, but also the ancient tournament drought.

As Lumpkin leaked up the court and McIntosh’s pass to him floated through the air, urgency turned to elation, the streak was emphatically nipped in the bud, and the drought came perilously and exhilaratingly close to an end.

Northwestern had been there before, in the visitors locker room at the Kohl Center, and in joyous celebration. Taphorn remembers everything from that night during his freshman year, and remembers the celebrations, which were wild, and comparable to Sunday’s.

But Northwestern has never been here before. Here is on the brink of a first NCAA tournament berth in program history. With Lumpkin’s dunk, on the same court on which it had set off on its journey three years ago, Northwestern arrived.