Bigger, faster, stronger, and better.

That’s what the DePaul Blue Demons (7-3) looked like as they took down NIU (0-9) in a 75-52 slugfest, handing the Huskies their ninth straight loss.

NIU was in the game early and senior forward Tim Toler recorded his first double-double of the year with 18 points and 13 rebounds, which helped the Huskies trail by only three at halftime, 28-25.

The upset over DePaul was not meant to be however, and four minutes into the second half the Big East team stopped toying with the young Huskies and took over.

“For 25 minutes of the game, I thought we played them toe to toe,” said NIU head coach Mark Montgomery. “At the first timeout of the second half, we were down one, and things were going pretty good, but unfortunately DePaul stepped their game up.”

Until that point, the Huskies had relied on Toler and their strong zone defense, which had DePaul baffled until the second half.

“I thought our zone kind of slowed them down a little bit, but unfortunately at the other end we just didn’t make shots and their athleticism stepped up a notch,” said Montgomery.

The Blue Demons, led by the strong play of guards Brandon Young and Jeremiah Kelly, and forward Cleveland Melvin who led all scorers with 19 points, went on a 17-0 run and never looked back.

DePaul’s full court pressure defense really helped them pull away; the Blue Demons scored 25 points off of 18 NIU turnovers while suffocating the Huskies into shooting 29 percent from the field.

“We turned up our defense and just got after it, pressuring the ball, and we started working as a team, and if you do that everything is going to go your way,” said Young.

DePaul head coach Oliver Purnell’s defense didn’t seem to work early against NIU but certainly wore the Huskies out in the end.

“Our pressure defense could not have been better in the second half, it wasn’t effective early, but it does have a wearing down effect on you, and I think that’s kind of what happened. It’s kind of like blitzing in football, it might not work early, but it will get you sooner or later,” said Purnell.

NIU didn’t shoot the ball well again, and the team again failed to back up another strong performance from Toler.

The Huskies also did not compete for a full 40 minutes, which was again re-iterated as a key component in the loss, but Toler says the team, despite the big loss, is already looking towards the next game.

“We played hard for 25 minutes, but there are 40 minutes in the game, but we’ll bounce back, regroup and get ready for Saturday because SIU is a really winnable game, it’s a rivalry game, and hopefully we can pull out a win,” Toler said.

It would bother many players and coaches to be winless, but Montgomery says the focus is not on the record, but on the experience the team gets before entering MAC play.

“I’m not looking at that win-loss record right now, because we told our guys that when the MAC season starts, that’s what we’ve been looking forward to, and we just want to get experience until that starts,” Montgomery said.

“We’re getting better, we’re getting that much closer, so we’re not going to worry about the record, we’re just going to worry about getting better in practice, and make sure we get better in the games.”