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| Northern Illinois guard Mike DiNunno is fouled on a shot against Buffalo this past Saturday. (Rob Winner – rwinner@daily-chronicle.com) |
DeKALB – Never one at a loss for an analogy, Northern Illinois basketball coach Ricardo Patton has been reminded of a TV show from his youth over the past few weeks.
After watching his team win six straight, including a 4-0 start to Mid-American Conference play, followed by a five-game nosedive to the bottom half of the MAC standings, Patton couldn't help but think of the long-running game show "To Tell The Truth."
For those who haven't seen this classic show, the basic premise is that a panel of judges guess which of three contestants held either an unusual job or went through a unique experience. Two of the contestants were impostors while one was the real character, who had to tell the truth while the impostors were allowed to lie.
"They would have these three guys and at the end everybody was trying to figure out who the real guy was and they'd say, 'Will the real Bob Jones please stand up?' " Patton said.
"That's where we are. Will the real Northern Illinois basketball team please stand up?"
At 3 p.m. today, Patton hopes he gets his answer as the Huskies (8-13, 4-5 MAC) play Miami (Ohio) (9-13, 6-3 MAC) at the Convocation Center.
NIU's main problem in its slide has been defense. The Huskies have allowed at least 90 points in three of the past four games and their best defensive showing was giving up 76 points at Kent State.
"We're giving up far too much dribble penetration to the paint," Patton said. "And even if you look at some of the bigs that have scored against us, a lot of it has come off of guards penetrating, our bigs are helping up and they're just dropping it off to the post."
That lack of perimeter defense could get exposed again today with the RedHawks being led by a senior guard in Kenny Hayes. Patton called Hayes "an orchestrator" and Hayes is more than capable of having a big game. In the second game of the season, Hayes (16 points, five assists, two steals) and Miami came within two points of winning at Kentucky.
NIU guard Xavier Silas said the lack of defense has been a combination of things for the Huskies, especially once NIU starts trailing in games.
"I think we're making some mistakes by being overaggressive and trying to overcompensate," Silas said. "So we've got to get back to being smarter and trust our defense that we were doing in the beginning."
Whether the Huskies get back to doing that or not will be a big clue as to which NIU team is the truth.
