Player | Minutes | NU Pts | PSU Pts | Raw +/- | Player +/- | Game +/- |
---|
Nicholson | 28 | 43 | 46 | -3 | +5.03 | +4.43 |
Martinelli | 36 | 59 | 59 | +0 | +1.44 | +1.44 |
Hunger | 12 | 18 | 10 | +8 | -0.28 | +1.33 |
Langborg | 32 | 52 | 52 | +0 | +1.23 | +1.23 |
Barnhizer | 40 | 68 | 63 | +5 | -0.88 | +0.12 |
Buie | 38 | 65 | 57 | +8 | -2.13 | -0.53 |
Clayton | 11.5 | 30 | 19 | +11 | -3.54 | -1.34 |
Blake Smith | 2 | 5 | 9 | -4 | -0.88 | -1.68 |
The three biggest Wildcat players on the court were the most productive.
Matt Nicholson gets the game ball, even though the Wildcats were -3 while he was playing.
He did a solid job on Wahab, who scored all 4 of his points in the first 3 minutes of the game.
Luke Hunger was effective in relief of Nicholson, with the team only allowing 10 points to PSU in 12 minutes. Thats a sharp improvement defensively.
With Ty Berry out indefinitely, Martinelli picked up minutes and did some good things, especially on the offensive boards.
Freshman Jordan Clayton put in a "Ryan Greer" type of performance, playing 11.5 minutes, during which NU blitzed PSU 30-19.
However, he only recorded one defensive rebound, so his Player +/- reflects this lack of individual production.
A couple years ago, when Greer and Buie were paired in the backcourt, NU was quite effective, with no obvious reason why.
When Greer took Buie's place on the court, we got creamed.
This season, subbing Clayton in
for Buie has been "quite bad."
Against Penn State, Clayton played exclusively
alongside Buie and the team performed very well.
So it is possible Collins has found something in how he uses Clayton.
The task of replacing Boo Buie fell to Blake Smith for almost 2 minutes. That didn't seem to work very well.
Prior to Ty Berry's injury, NU's most effective duo had been Nicholson/Berry.
As pointed out after Berry's injury, the new starting lineup of Nicholson/Martinelli/Barnhizer/Langborg/Buie had not been very good so far this season.
They had been outscored 120-116 in about 70 minutes.
Alternatively, Luke Hunger with the same 4 had been effective, outscoring our opponents 59-47 in less than 29 minutes.
Both of those trends held steady against Penn State.
The starters struggled mightily on offense, getting beat 32-25 in almost 21 minutes of action.
In the 6 minutes Hunger played with the other starters, NU outscored PSU 10-6.