DePaul boards up win; Simmons scores 35, keys rebounding effort.

Byline: Skip Myslenski

CHICAGO _ The face of DePaul coach Pat Kennedy was as red as Santa's suit, and it had nothing to do with with the holiday season. It had, instead, everything to do with the way his Blue Demons suddenly were playing.

There were 4 minutes 33 seconds left in Saturday's matinee with Northern Illinois at the Allstate Arena, and they were well on their way to an easy 78-67 victory over the Huskies (1-7). But in the previous three minutes, they had performed with neither poise nor discipline and had watched their 15-point lead slip to eight.

Kennedy called a 30-second timeout and carried on so excitedly in the huddle that his face turned that color so seasonably appropriate.

"When you have a big lead, sometimes you get too relaxed," Demons forward Bobby Simmons said. "A few times down the court, we tried to make plays that weren't really there, and they scored and we didn't. He told us to get organized."

"In games of this nature, you want to be mature," Kennedy said. "You get up 15. That's a very solid effort. OK. Now close it out with maturity and let's get to the locker room. I wasn't seeing that."

Kennedy has, since the season began, harped on the need for his team to play with more consistency. It just wasn't doing that. The other point he had driven home was the need to hit the boards more aggressively, which it hadn't done while getting outrebounded in the previous five outings.

"He told us if we got outrebounded again, we'd have to come in and run (Sunday morning)," Simmons said.

Kennedy confirmed that: "I really was going to make them run."

How much?

"I don't know. It depends on how badly we were outrebounded."

That was one threat the Demons did respond to. They simply swarmed all over the smaller Huskies down low. They collected 56 total rebounds to Northern's 29, 24 offensive rebounds to Northern's seven, and in the first half alone, they picked up a remarkable 25 second-chance points. They finished with 27.

Simmons led the Demons (7-4) with a career-high 35 points and a season-high 15 rebounds (seven offensive). Northern forward Leon Rodgers answered with 23 points, but the game was truly settled by DePaul's collective rebounding effort.

Freshman forward Andre Brown had 11 rebounds (five offensive), and Williams and Steve Hunter had nine each. All afternoon, the Demons treated any missed shot as if it were just part of an old tip drill.

"It was frustrating," said Northern coach Andy Greer, in his first game as head coach. "I thought defensively, for the most part, we did heck of a job today except for finishing it with the defensive rebounding."

"It was very frustrating," echoed Rodgers. "We got killed on the boards. At least in the second half we gave a better effort. But by then it was too late. The last five minutes of the first half, they really pounded us."

The Huskies were down only six entering those five minutes, but then came the telling sequence that put this one away for the Demons: Hunter on an offensive rebound and Simmons on the same; Simmons on another offensive rebound and guard Imari Sawyer on a layup off a steal; Hunter on a tip and Simmons on an offensive rebound plus a foul shot he converted. With that, the Demons went on to build their lead to 14 points by halftime, and then they nursed that lead along except for that 3-minute stretch that so agitated Kennedy.

"I was very disappointed with that," Kennedy said. "We've been working hard on it in practice. And we're going to work on it harder."

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