Thursday night, the Northwestern Wildcats -- looking to crawl back onto the NCAA Tournament bubble -- held a 14-point lead over their intrastate rival, Illinois. Less than six minutes later, the No. 22 Illini were victoriously celebrating on the Welsh-Ryan Arena floor. What made this thing exciting wasn't the comeback itself, but how it happened. It all started so innocently. A Mike Davis jumper cut the Northwestern deficit to 57-45 with 5:08 left in the game. A few minutes later, and the lead was slowly chipped down to seven. With about 1:30 left in the game, though, is when things started to get crazy.
Trailing 59-53, Illinois' Davis goes up for a what basically amounts to a layup. He misses, and emphatically claims he was fouled. Replays conclusively showed that he simply blew the shot without any significant defensive contact. Thus, a huge opportunity to Illinois to make the game interesting had flown by the wayside. But ...
- Illinois puts on the full-court press and forces a jump ball just past midcourt with 1:10 left. The possession arrow points toward Illinois.
- Illinois guard Trent Meacham throws up an absolute rainmaker from the baseline corner -- and nails it for three points. Northwestern is now desperately clutching a 59-56 lead with 59.4 seconds left.
- Off an Illinois timeout, in the midst of Illinois' press, Northwestern guard Craig Moore travels with the basketball. Illinois now has the ball with 57 seconds left.
- Sprung by a crushing screen at the three-point line, Meacham drives all the way for a lay-in to cut the Wildcat lead to one with 42.6 seconds left.
- Northwestern is unable to stop the bleeding because they are out of timeouts, but they do make it all the way to the front-court and run an offensive set, with about seven seconds between the shot-clock and game-clock. Northwestern guard Michael Thompson drives down the right side of the lane to attempt a lay-up, but has his shot blocked by Meacham. Unbelievably, on the way to the floor, the ball ricochets off Thompson and out of bounds. It's Illinois basketball with 14 seconds left.
- Illinois takes the ball down court and Demetri McCamey hits a 14-footer in traffic for the game-winner. They should also be thanking Meacham for his 12 points and key defensive play in the final five minutes to help propel them.
Illinois emerges victorious, and squeezes tightly to their claim as the Big Ten's second best team. Northwestern blows a golden opportunity to pick up another quality victory for their tournament resume. That resume is being built more and more for the NIT at this point.
