The Northwestern Wildcats came out hot at home Wednesday night, shooting well from the arc, and leading 34-27 at the half. Bill Carmody hinted that the Cats had used the break to rest up a bit and get a fresh perspective on their game.

After 2 months of 6 days a week practicing its good for the guys, not that you come back refreshed after the exams, but its good for your legs and you come out of it a little differently.

The break also allowed for 4 practices without any games,

You're able to teach some of the things that during that stretch of so many game in so few days, you didn't have a chance to improve..."

The Cats worked on defense during the time off, and apparently worked -- the Sun Devils.  And NU's position as the present leader in shooting held up, although 10 of 17 from the free throw line tonight wasn't all that great.

Another pregame key for Carmody was for the Cats to take care of the ball - NU only turned the ball over 11 times, most of those during some ASU runs in the 2nd half. NU had a 1.81 assist to turnover ratio during the game.

And then there was rebounding...

That's going to be a a problem as long as I'm alive. or every team I coach, rebounding is going to be a concern, and this team really hits the offensive boards so...its similar to a lot of the teams we've played so far -- don't turn the ball over and see if you can get the ball off the glass.

So that's the setup. Here were the results:

The Cats managed only 11 turnovers and made 35 rebounds. Vedran Vukusic had a career high 26 points, including 5 of 6 free throws and 15 points from outside the arc. T.J. Parker and Jitim Young both had 12 points, Evan Seacat hit 2 of 3 for 6. Young also just missed his second double-double, leading the Cats with 9 rebounds.

After the game, Coach Carmody recapped the last 4 seconds for the Welsh-Ryan crowd.

Get it to TJ [big laugh].

You know last year we played Bowling Green here and we beat them at the buzzer and I think he got down the court in about 3.2 seconds so we knew were just trying to run 'em off there.

I wasn't sure we'd be able to get to it because I thought they'd double team him but he managed to weasel his way through there and at that stage no one wants to foul so they weren't even reaching for the ball, and he got a pretty good look and knocked it down.

This game looked like another sign of growth for the team as the Cats fought off an Arizona State comeback.

There were so many plays that could have lost the game for you and other ones that could have won and Mohamed got a nice rebound on them and handed it off to Jitim for a layup, you know a number of things pop in my head but there's still that foul shooting, if we could knock down a few foul shots there at the end we could have iced it.

But that's a nice team and we've seen them on tape a number of times -- Arizona State -- and its hard to win on the road and they fought back and never quit and that guy in the middle - Ike Diogu we certainly didn't have any answers for him - the ball was up there and he just went after it.

I thought that team showed a lot of guts up there.

What about the Fast Break - the Wildcats seemed more up tempo Wednesday night.

I thought we should have been up about 14 at the half because we missed a couple of easy breaks. We've had about 5 good days of practice and just been emphasizing it, we have all these little guys out there and relatively quick so lets start running it and pushing it.

I don't care what the situation, we really didn't do as well or we weren't as productive as I thought we should have been. We had some opportunities that we sort of let get away, but I thought that gave us an aggressiveness.

And what about Vedran Vukusic [26 Points 6 rebounds]

I should have given him a blow in there somewhere because he had a little stretch of about 3 minutes when he was really tired, where he looked like Gumby out there, he was falling all over the place. Yeah, he had a hell of a night.

And we saw Ivan Tolic again tonight.

With that Ike in there we just had to have another body out there -- I thought Davor needed a rest  -- you know he did pretty well when he was out there.

Next is a pretty big game with the IUC Flames on the road Saturday night...

Yeah, well, lets enjoy this one OK?

On the road at UIC - Saturday on the Fox Sports Net at 5 PM Central.