NCAA Basketball: Western Carolina and Northwestern with Players of the Week

Power Conference Player of the Week – Boo Buie

There is no way that anyone is going to be able to dispute the winner in the power five class. He orchestrated a win against one of the top teams in the country with one of the best performances of his career and likely one of the best performances of the season. The player is Boo Buie and the team is the Northwestern Wildcats. Buie guided his team to a victory over Purdue. The Boilermakers have now come to Evanston ranked number 1 two times in a row and have left each time with a loss. Buie has been a big reason why Northwestern was able to beat Purdue each time.

The Wildcat’s guard is in his last year of college and he is one of the best Wildcats to ever play there and he is going to do his best to try and get Northwestern to back-to-back tournaments. He is off to a good start carrying them on the offensive end. He is currently averaging 20 points per game and in two games this week he showed why he was one the first team All-Big Ten list. The guard isn’t overly flashy, but he takes a lot of great shots and leads the defense as well as the offense for Northwestern.

The Wildcats did play two games last week and both were against formidable opponents. Against Northern Illinois who was fresh off a win over DePaul Buie scored 23 points on 8-11 from the floor, 4 of 5 from deep. He also added in 7 assists and 2 rebounds. That was a great game, but it is what the point guard did against Purdue that won him the award.

Against Purdue Buie scored 31 points on 10-20 shooting, 2-5 from deep, and 9-10 from the free throw line. Most of those free throws came in Overtime when the game was very much in the balance. The point guard made a tough runner towards the end of regulation to give Northwestern the lead and then was unbelievable on the defensive end and at the free throw line of overtime to seal it. It was a performance that we will be talking about all year.

To top off that performance the guard had 9 assists to go with zero turnovers. Zero turnovers is big time especially when trying to pull off a huge upset over the number 1 team in the country. There were other players who had huge weeks, but none were as impactful as Buie was.