Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody delivered some good news for Huskie Nation Thursday. Kevin Coble, the Wildcats’ leading scorer from last season, will not play Friday when the Huskies come to Evanston in their regular season opener.
“He’s out for Friday and we’re going to find out how long he’ll be out [soon],” Carmody said. “He’s going to be out for a while, that much I know.”
Coble averaged 15.5 points per game last season. The 6-foot-8-inch senior forward would have figured to be a big matchup problem for the undersized Huskies.
Coble or not, the Wildcats are going to run the famous Princeton-style offense. The offense, which consists of a lot of perimeter passing and a lot of back-door cuts, figures to test the defense of the Huskies.
“It’ll be the first time for a lot of these guys guarding all the back cuts and dribble penetration,” Patton said.
NIU forward Xaiver Silas played in the Princeton-style offense during his time at Colorado under head coach Jeff Bzdelik. Patton also said center Sean Kowal saw it his freshman year at Colorado.
“I think we should be all right as long as we stay disciplined,” said NIU point guard Mike DiNunno. “The main thing is you can’t over-deny against that type of offense. Sometimes we can get overaggressive on defense and that is what will kick our butt.”
NIU has beaten Northwestern twice in its history. Northwestern leads the series 7-2. Overall against the Big Ten, NIU is 6-36.
“Our goal is to win,” DiNunno said. “We think we can beat them, every [NIU] coach thinks we can beat them, significantly. It’s not just like, ‘Let’s keep it close and in the end see if we can pull something off.’”
How the defense does against the Princeton-style offense remains to be seen, but Carmody said the Huskies offense worries him.
“We have a lot of respect for them,” Carmody said. “They’re a team that can put points on the board in a lot of different ways. They get to the basket, they shoot the ball well and I think they can be a really good team.”

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