Northwestern’s stars shine in season-opening win over Loyola Maryland

Lindsey Pulliam picked up where she left off, leading Northwestern to a season-opening victory at home

EVANSTON, ILL. — Opening game jitters are going to happen. It’s inevitable. But five minutes without a bucket to start the season? At some point that zero on the scoreboard starts looking bigger and bigger.

Such was the scenario for a talented Northwestern Wildcats team in the opening minutes of its 67-46 win over Loyola Maryland on Sunday afternoon in Welsh-Ryan Arena. Lindsey Pulliam, the team’s top scorer in each of the last two seasons, seemed destined to break the ice, but even she started with five straight missed field goals that seemed to put the crowd more and more on edge.

Then finally, at the 5:18 mark of the first quarter, she reminded the arena why she was a first team All-Big Ten player last year with an emphatic three-pointer, assisted by fellow star guard Veronica Burton. The ice was broken. Pulliam’s mindset during the less than ideal start?

“Keep shooting,” she said. “Eventually it’s going to go in. It’s the first game so it was a little rough coming in, and I think we just got comfortable and everybody started making shots.”

As is usually the case in this game of runs, when it rains, it pours. NU put up a 17-spot in the remaining five minutes of the quarter, and extended the lead to 30-18 at the half. The ‘Cats did continue to struggle offensively for most of the game, shooting 34.4%, but they held the Greyhounds to just under 31.5% from the field and forced 21 turnovers. Pulliam said the team’s goal was to hold the Greyhounds under 50, and the ‘Cats delivered, keying in on perimeter defense to keep Loyola at arm’s length for most of the afternoon.

It’s not the start that anyone in purple was hoping for against a Greyhounds squad that finished 7-24 last season, but NU coach Joe McKeown said he was confident his team would bounce back from its initial struggles.

“The shots that we missed were great shots by great shooters, so I knew that it would eventually work itself out,” McKeown said. “I was more [concerned with making sure] we rebounded and defended well, and I thought we did a pretty solid job there.”

As they seek to prove that last year’s 21-15 record and finish in the WNIT Finals was the beginning of a program resurgence rather than a flash in the pan, NU will need Pulliam to continue to come up big in moments like that, as she has so many times before. It wasn’t a shooting performance she envisioned, but after the 0-for-5 start, she shot 8-for-16 from the field and finished with a game-high 25 points, as well as four assists and four rebounds. McKeown called her a “momentum player,” meaning once she gets going, “it’s hard to take her out of the game.”

“Every time Pulliam shoots I think the ball’s going in,” he said. “When it doesn’t I look to my coaches and ask ‘what happened? How’d she miss?'”

The biggest question facing the ‘Cats entering the year, in spite of their depth, was where the rebounds would come from. Pallas Kunaiyi-Akpanah, a mainstay down low for Northwestern over the last four seasons, graduated, leaving a large hole inside. While a matchup with an undersized Loyola Maryland team may not fully answer that question, many Wildcats’ lines on the stat sheet provide some clues for how those boards will be attained.

Sydney Wood, a sophomore, led the team with eight in just 14 minutes on the floor due to foul trouble, leading a team effort that saw formidable post presence Abbie Wolf (who also scored 14 on 5-for-7 shooting), Amber Jamison and Burton each tally six boards.

McKeown said Wood, with her versatility, is extremely important to this team, and that he thought Wolf was excellent in her debut as NU’s starting center.

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“I was really proud of Abbie Wolf,” McKeown said. “She’s coming into her own and she gives us a presence that you have to have in this league. I thought that was big. [Kunaiyi-Akpanah] was such a huge part of this program, so it’s hard to replace her. Wolf stepped up tonight, so that’s what we’re looking for.”

The schedule does the Wildcats no favors in the immediate future, as they will travel to Marquette on Thursday and Duke the following Sunday before coming home for six games in a row. McKeown said that while non-conference is a time for adjustments and testing lineups, he is excited about his team’s potential.

“You can’t get too high or low,” McKeown said. “These games, we’re just trying to learn from. But our players have a chip on their shoulders, and they understand we’re keeping score. It should be fun.”

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