More Than A Game: Northwestern Battles to Double OT for Teammate Ty Berry

EVANSTON, Ill. — The outcome of Wednesday's game with Indiana was secondary to Northwestern.

The morning of the game, the Wildcats received tragic news. The father of Northwestern guard Ty Berry passed away unexpectedly less than 24 hours before the game.

Berry did not play against Indiana on Wednesday, but his teammates did, battling with the Hoosiers into double overtime but coming up just short 79-76.

It was Northwestern's 10-straight loss, but it was the last thing on head coach Chris Collins' mind after the game.

"This has been a very emotional day for our basketball program for the last 24 hours," Collins said. "First and foremost I want to say all our thoughts and prayers are with Ty Berry with what happened with his dad, the unexpecting passing of his dad. He loved his son. They spoke every day. It was heartbreaking this morning to deal with that with him."

Collins said it was also difficult for the entire team. He said playing this season through COVID-19 and the team having to stay isolated, the players have become each other's families more than ever.

So when they found out the news about Berry's dad, Collins didn't know how the team would respond in the game.

"There was a lot of emotion this morning because the guys were so heartbroken for Ty," Collins said. "I hope you saw we came out and we competed our butts off. We fought, we had passion, did we make mistakes? Yeah. Did we make every shot? No. But for those guys to deal with kind of what they dealt with this morning to come out — I wasn't sure, I mean I really wasn't sure. I love our team. I love our guys, and for them to come out and play as hard as they did, I'm just heartbroken that we weren't able to come away with a win because I felt like we really deserved it."

Collins' near five-minute opening statement was very emotional, and he got choked up on a few occasions.

He wanted to make it known that even though the results over the past two months haven't been what the team wanted, he wants people outside the program to understand how much the players are sacrificing this season.

"It's just been an emotionally draining day, guys. I wish people would understand these college kids and hopefully through their mistakes, maybe they're not doing this or doing that, but you understand what they're going through to play sports right now," Collins said. "And we get it, we want to play. We're choosing to do this, but we're going to find some joy in it. We're going to keep competing, keep practicing hard and hopefully use the basketball world as a safe haven for all of us."

That's why the Wildcats decided to play Wednesday night. They wanted to play for their teammate and try to pull out a win for him.

Northwestern guard Boo Buie, who originally wears the number zero, wore the number three last night to honor Berry.

💜💜💜 https://t.co/lAILIPmXbA
— Ty Berry (@Ty_Berry3) February 10, 2021

"We definitely got rocked today, and the game, our guys wanted to come out, they wanted to play, they wanted to honor Ty," Collins said. "Those who have been around Ty, he's the most energetic, enthusiastic kid and we just wanted to honor his spirit, and I thought we did that.

"It just really hurts for the players because they deserved something good for them to happen today and it didn't, and you know what, that's life. That's life. And like I told them, we gotta pick ourselves up and we gotta come back tomorrow and we get another opportunity to play another game on the weekend."