Maurice Watson, Jr., showed Seton Hall how much he has improved his shooting compared to last season. (Williams / WBR) $CLICK TO BUY
After practice on Monday, Creighton senior point guard Maurice Watson Jr. talked about not feeling any pressure to keep the loss column clean as December comes to a close. On Wednesday in front of a standing-room only crowd of 18,084 fans, he and his Bluejays turned up the pressure on reigning Big East Tournament Champion Seton Hall to open conference play with an 89-75 home win.
The Philadelphia native, along with his starting back court mates, sophomore Khyri Thomas and junior Marcus Foster, each had a game-high three steals, and Creighton turned 18 Seton Hall giveaways into a +18 advantage in points off turnovers.
That stat pretty much summed up the result of the game, according to Pirates head coach Kevin Willard.
“They played really good and we had too many turnovers,” he said after getting asked to analyze the performance.
“If you can have 10 turnovers against them here you have a chance, but not 18,” Willard added. “It’s the biggest difference with them between this year and last year. Last year they didn’t have Foster and Thomas guarding the wings. Khyri Thomas is probably the most improved player in the league, offensively and defensively, and Marcus Foster gives them another physical guard out there. You just can’t turn the ball over 18 times on the road in this league and expect to have chance to win.”
Cole Huff is usually known for his shooting, but came up big defensively in the post on Wednesday night (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Creighton got off to a good start inside as well. While fronting the post on Seton Hall big man Angel Delgado with senior forward Cole Huff and rotating a double team from freshman center Justin Patton on the defensive end, they also got plenty of touches on the low block on their end of the floor. The seven-foot tall Patton had a dunk and beat Delgado on a nice up and under move to help the 10th-ranked Bluejays open up a 10-5 lead after around five minutes of action.
The Bluejays continued to stay up on the boards and limit Seton Hall second-chance opportunities midway through the first half, but the Pirates hung in there thanks mainly to hitting four of their first six shots from downtown to head into the under-12 timeout trailing by just one at 18-17. Junior forward Toby Hegner made a couple of key plays — a blocked shot on one end and a 3-pointer from the left wing on the other — to put Creighton in front.
Junior guard Khadeen Carrington put Seton Hall back in front with a pair of free throws at the 11:04 mark, but Patton answered with a layup to make it 20-19, Bluejays.
Nearly two minutes later, senior guard Madison Jones answered for the Pirates with a basket in the paint before Watson Jr. hit a pull-up 3-pointer from the top of the key to make it 23-21, Creighton, with 8:49 to go.
“The first 10 or 12 minutes I thought was indicative of how the game was going to be,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “It was such a grind every possession on both ends.”
But Creighton again turned up the heat defensively and in the paint offensively. Over the final eight minutes of the first half the Bluejays produced 12 points in the paint and eight more off of Seton Hall turnovers to extend their lead to 50-37 heading into the locker room.
Creighton ended the first half with 1.32 points per possession, a 22-12 edge in points in the paint, and an 11-4 advantage in points off turnovers after coughing it up only three times compared to Seton Hall’s nine.
Justin Patton had a solid Big East debut with 17 point and 9 boards for the Jays (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
To start the second half, junior forward Desi Rodriguez caught fire for the Pirates as he tried to dig his team out of a double-digit hole. The 6-foot-6 lefty scored 15 of his his 24 points after intermission, including six during a 10-1 run right out of the locker room to help trim Creighton’s double-digit halftime lead down to 51-47 with 17:01 still to play. Carrington matched his teammate’s scoring production in the second half by scoring 15 of his game-high 27 points after the break, but the reigning conference tournament champions would not get any closer than four points the rest of the way.
The Bluejays stretched the lead back to double digits at the midway point of the final period the same way they built it at the end of the first. After Seton Hall cut it to a four-point game, Creighton answered with 12 of their next 15 either off of turnovers or in the paint, while the other three came on drives to the rim that resulted in trips to the free throw line.
Over the final 10 minutes, the closest Seton Hall got was nine points when Rodriguez knocked down a deep, contested 3-pointer from the top of the key to make it 81-72, Bluejays, with 3:57 remaining before the home team closed the game on an 8-3 run.
Against what was perceived to be a more physical, defensive-minded team than themselves, the Bluejays finished with a 16-point advantage in points in the paint, an 18-point advantage in points off turnovers, and limited Seton Hall to only eight second-chance points despite giving up 11 offensive rebounds.
“Against a team that prides itself on scoring in the paint, we outscored 42-26. A team that turns you over and turns those into points, our points off turnovers were 27-9. They got 11 offensive rebounds, but they only got eight points,” McDermott noted. “I thought our execution for the most part was pretty good.”
Maurice Watson Jr. led Creighton with 21 points on the night, and finished tied with Seton Hall’s entire team in assists with 10 to register his fifth points-assists double-double of the season. Khyri Thomas added 17 points, eight rebounds, and three steals, while his roommate Justin Patton matched him with 17 points and one-upped in rebounds with nine.
The win improved the 10th-ranked Bluejays to 13-0 on the season, setting up an titanic showdown against the top-ranked team in the country and reigning national champion, Villanova.
The Wildcats survived a scare at home from DePaul to also improve to 13-0 ahead of Saturday’s contest in Omaha. Despite the game being sold-out for weeks, Greg McDermott kept his team locked in to the task at end. Now that they’ve passed all of their tests up to this point, most of which they did with bright blue, flying colors, it’s finally time to gear up for the Wildcats.
Coach McDermott and the Jays now can focus on Villanova (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
“We have not talked one minute about Villanova,” McDermott said when asked how he kept his team focused and not looking ahead. “I was honest on the media call yesterday — except for in the locker room before the game when we had Villanova-DePaul on — I haven’t watched them at all. Obviously I’ve got a lot of work to do before three o’clock tomorrow, but our focus was [on Seton Hall]. They ended our regular season last year, they beat us the last two times in our building, and it’s the first game [of conference play]. If you expect to compete for a conference championship you have to protect your home floor, you just have to. Teams don’t win conference titles and lose two or three games at home in league play, and we’ve got some really good teams that are going to come through here. It was important to get this one tonight — I was nervous about it.”
So how do the players feel about their date with champs?
“It should be fun,” Thomas said. “We lost to them twice last year, so it should be a real fun, a good fight for both teams. I’m sure we’re ready. I’m ready. We should all be ready to go…”
“We are ready,” Watson replied.
