Dan Weber writes a sports column for The River City News. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
Uh oh.
You hope these moments don’t come along all that often. Especially not in your first Horizon League home game after starting 0-2 in the conference on the road and now with a 2-9 Green Bay team coming in on a four-game losing streak and you’re already a bit staggered after opening 4-7 in a season when you were picked to do what you usually do and finish in the Horizon’s top three as you have the last six seasons with a 73-30 league record and five combined championships over the last four with a team that returned 91 percent of its scoring and added the league’s best freshman in Kentucky Mr. Basketball Sam Vinson from nearby Highlands High and you’re down three players out sick and the scoreboard says you’re down 11 – 33-22 – with just 3:53 left in the first half.
Uh oh.
And with school out, there are very few students here in a crowd announced at 2,384. So the 8,427-seat BB&T Arena is a pretty quiet place where you’d swear you could hear Northern’s season slipping away.
Uh oh.
“What does this Northern team need?” former NKU coach Kenney Shields was asked as he watched from his sideline seat at the end line. “A five” he said without hesitation. But no such big post player was available. So the Norse improvised. With an all-small lineup eventually.
This was not a place Northern was unfamiliar with — having to tough it out. But after having lost both their overtime games – one at home by two, the second by 13 at Eastern Kentucky 11 days ago and then having been blown out 38-14 the first half at Indiana last week so that a 47-41 second-half edge barely made a dent – NKU has had plenty of opportunities to show what they’re made of.
Thursday night, in closing the last 3:53 of the first half with an 11-5 run and then opening the second half with a 14-6 edge, “unlike some other games, our guys didn’t flinch,” was how Coach Darrin Horn described his 5-7 team’s 79-74 win.
Helping NKU not flinch was non-starter Trey Robinson, a 6-foot-6 sophomore from Hamilton, Ohio, who came on “to play three spots,” Horn said, “one he hasn’t ever played — the five.” And grab six rebounds and score 10 points, the fourth Norse in double figures.
Robinson had plenty of help from 6-8 Chris Brandon, in his first start this season, who totaled 11 rebounds and eight points in 21 minutes. “He was outstanding,” Horn said of the junior from Houston.
But you don’t win games like this with guys off the bench. NKU got plenty of push up front from the big three at guard – sophomore Marquis Warrick with 20 points, senior Trevon Faulkner with 19 and Vinson, with 11 points, six rebounds and three assists in an NKU-high 36:42 of play.
“Since he came on campus, you can’t tell he’s a freshman,” Faulkner said of Vinson, who more often than not ends up with the ball in his hands when a play has to be made. It won’t necessarily stay there but he usually touches it.
“He’s mature beyond his years,” Horn said, explaining why he trusts the first-year player in his first semester to do veteran things. “Did you see him play?” he asks. “He made a run last year . . . ,” leading Highlands to the state title and then he just shakes his head at the thought of it. “He’s our best defender . . . he has great instincts.”
Not that the slashing combo of Faulkner, out of Harrodsburg, and Warrick, out of Lexington Henry Clay, don’t. Time and again when it mattered down the stretch, they’d beat their man off the dribble and get the score Northern needed.
Warrick hit the shot that gave NKU a 76-72 lead with 52 seconds left. Then Warrick hit a pair of free throws with 23.6 seconds left before Faulkner added another the final one at the 13.1 mark for the 79-74 win.
And in doing so, they helped their coach do a better job . . . at his job. “Coach has confidence in us,” Faulkner said.
“One of the underrated things is the confidence a coach has . . . ” in his players, Horn said. Needless to say, he has that. Confident enough to play – and win – with the “all-small” lineup.
Although at 6-5 and 195 pounds now, Vinson can’t be considered all that small. And as much as the game hasn’t changed for him, and he’s asked to do much the same things he did at Highlands, Vinson knows he’s “no longer the biggest person out there like I was in high school,” when he gets to the rim.
And yeah, he agrees with Horn that maybe he’s been a bit too cautious challenging the big guys inside. “I agree,” he says. Look for more of that from here on out.
But if there’s a lesson that Horn wants his team to take from the precocious rookie who has been named outstanding freshman in the Horizon three times this season, it’s this.
“All he wants to do is win,” Horn says. Whatever it takes.
That is the lesson he brings with him from last year’s Sweet 16 championship run for the Bluebirds. “We finished with a win,” Sam said. Something no other team in Kentucky could say.
“That’s what I wanted to come in here and do – finish with a win.”
Horn likes the sound of that. “We’ve still got a long way to go,” he said of a schedule that has NKU back in action here Saturday at 2 against Milwaukee.
“This is a team that has to play aggressive and has to play confident. But if we play like we played tonight, we have a chance to win ‘em all.”
Just like Sam said.
–Dan Weber