This year's Depaul season is beginning to look a lot like last year. A team with a good deal of talent, but when they show up for games, they act like Two Face from the old Batman comics. The good side came out against Notre Dame on Saturday, leading them to a great win on the road. The bad side came out against Northern Illinois and Bradley, two games that Depaul should have won but didn't. The real question going into last night's game at Northwestern was which side of Two Face's coin would show at the opening tip.

Bill Carmody, the Northwestern coach and last year's Big Ten coach of the year, had the perfect item on his Utility Belt to counter the Two Face Depaul, the Princeton game. Before coming to Northwestern 4 years ago, Carmody was either an assistant or head coach at Princeton for 18 years. During that time, he studied and implemented Princeton's patented slow down game. Last night, Northwestern was able to execute to perfection, leaving the final score of the game in the low 50s and frustrating the talented Blue Demons.

Time after time down the court, Depaul struggled to get any rhythm on offense. Several times, drives by Sammy Mejia and Drake Diener were stalled. Depaul was forced to live off of 12 foot jumpers just outside the lane and when they stopped falling in the second half, that was all that Northwestern needed to take the lead, and the win. Diener was also not on with his game last night. After scoring 19 on a 7 of 10 shooting performance, including 3 for 5 from beyond the arc, against Notre Dame, he went cold coming back to Chicago. He could manage only 2 points against the Wildcats. Quemont Greer was the lone bright spot for the Blue Demons, but success with getting the ball inside to him stalled out in the latter part of the game when Northwestern was able to clog the lane and not give him the open look. Greer had one run midway through the second half but stalled out with 20 points and didn't score in the final 8:30.

Northwestern was helped by 6'10" Duke transfer Michael Thompson, appearing in his first game for the Wildcats. The offense ran through him on Wednesday night, leading to a 12 point and 5 rebound performance by the McDonald's All-American. Depaul tried to double Thompson with some success. After the game, Thompson was surprised by the tactic. "I definitely did not expect that my first game back. I didn't think they knew," Thompson said. "They were getting frustrated, though, because if anyone doubles down, Vedran or somebody out top makes them pay for it." Vedran is Vedran Vukusic, who had 4 points in the final 90 seconds to help seal the win and 17 overall. Vukusic and Thompson led the slow deliberate drive to the finish for Northwestern.

Depaul coach Bill Leitao will have a big job over the next few days before the Blue Demons take on the UIC Flames on Saturday at home. "I don't forget about any game, everything has to be analyzed," said Leitao after the loss. We will see Saturday if he found a way to get the good side of the coin to come down for his Two Face team.