Northwestern fans hyped for school's second-ever NCAA Tournament appearance
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS) – March Madness was in full swing on Thursday. Both the Illini and Northwestern men's basketball teams were in action for the NCAA Tournament.
CBS 2's Matt Zahn was in California where the No. 7 Wildcats were set to play No. 10 Boise State.
There was a good showing of support from Northwestern fans in Sacramento following the Cats as they play in the program's second-ever NCAA Tournament.
The team was expecting about 1,000 people from a rally at Punch Bowl Social just steps away from the arena where Northwestern would face Boise State.
The excitement level was high among the fans.
After some lean years following the Wildcats' only other berth in 2017, the fans have really rallied around this veteran group. The fans for Thursday's game traveled far and from all over to support their squad.
"Whether it's L.A. where I live, or San Francisco, Chicago, New York, it's a small school, but it has a really strong, national alumni base Northwestern represents," said Andrew Kirsh, a Northwestern alum from Los Angeles.
"We're still new to the whole March Madness," said Adam Alcaves, a Northwestern alum from Berkeley, California. "We had that one glorious run in Salt Lake, but it's still fresh. It's still exciting. We're happy to be here. It's a reunion. We're having 800 people here, so it's a lot of friendly faces I haven't seen in a long time."
The party was just getting started a few hours before tipoff and Northwestern hopes it'll continue through the night.
The reason for the fans' optimism, and one of the biggest reasons for the Cats' turnaround this year has been their defense.
Northwestern was 15th in the country in scoring defense this season led by Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Chase Audige. Chris Lowery, in his first year as an assistant, gets a lot of credit for their improved play on that side of the ball.
"I think the biggest thing is just the grit and toughness and some of the changes with how we guard certain things," Lowery said. "Just to see guys play hard, that's important to me."
Lowery has NCAA Tournament experience when he was the head coach at Southern Illinois when he led them to the Sweet 16 back in 2007.