Men's Basketball

Morning After: #10 Creighton Dunks St. John’s 85-72

[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton shoots 5-18 from three-point range, after shooting just 6-24 from outside on Saturday. If you’re counting, that means they’ve made 11 of their last 42 three-point attempts, or 26%. Ouch.

Is it a slump, fatigue, or something more? So many of the missed threes hit the front of the rim that it makes you wonder.

It wasn’t that long ago that if a Creighton team had an off-night shooting threes, they’d almost certainly lose. Look no further than the great 2013-14 team led by Doug McDermott; they were very vulnerable on nights when their outside jumpers weren’t falling (*cough* Baylor *cough*). Last night, they had more dunks — nine — than three-pointers made, and they scored 52 of their 85 points in the paint. They won by double-digits on the road, had an opportunity to blow out the Red Storm, and functioned offensively almost entirely at or around the rim.

Let It Fly means something entirely different to this Bluejay squad. Holy crap.

Standout Performance:

In front of NBA scouts, Justin Patton had another monster game, scoring a career-high 25 points on 11-14 shooting, with nine rebounds, four assists, a block, and a steal in 30 minutes. Five of his 11 made baskets came on dunks, flying over, around, and occasionally straight past the smaller Red Storm frontcourt. It seems like his arsenal of weapons grows every game — from fadeaway jumpers, to up-and-under layups using the rim to shield the ball from a defender, to effortless dunks, to three-pointers…he has so many ways to score, it’s ridiculous.

Case in point: how many seven-footers have you seen that have the hand-eye coordination to catch a ball while moving toward the basket, and then have multiple ways to finish depending on how the rim is defended?

He’s played just 15 games in a Bluejay uniform, and already making some fans sweat about whether they’ll get to watch him in Omaha next season or on TV in an NBA game somewhere.

“He reminds me of Marcus Camby,” St. John’s coach Chris Mullin said after the game. “[He has] great hands and even banged a three. Especially tonight, he looked All-NBA.”

Can he be our little (big) secret for just a little longer, please?

Recap & Analysis:

Eleven seconds into the game, the Jays ran an alley-oop for Marcus Foster for their first points. Moments later, Cole Huff blocked St. John’s very first shot attempt ten feet out of bounds. After 30 seconds of game time, it was obvious: Creighton intended to exert their will at the rim on both sides of the court, and St. John’s was going to need to rain in jump shots to keep up.

The Bluejay defense didn’t even allow them that. St. John’s missed their first six shots, all heavily contested — three mid-range jumpers and three 3-pointers — and with the CU defense keeping them out of the lane, just two of their first 22 points came inside, and they had just six points in the paint by halftime.

For the game, the vaunted freshman backcourt of Shamorie Ponds and Marcus LoVett combined for 40 points on 30 shots, with just one assist and three turnovers. Creighton’s guard corps was aggressive all night, coming up with steals, cutting off driving lanes, preventing them from using ball screens to free themselves, and staying in front of them when they tried to create off the dribble. Nothing came easy, which is a crazy thing to write about a Creighton defense, but here we are.

Still, the Johnnies were hanging around, and with less than three minutes to go, the score 33-24. Patton sparked an 11-2 run to end the half, scoring seven points in the stretch including a three-pointer that temporarily took the air out of Carnesecca Arena — the sight of a seven-footer who was dominating on the block draining a three in transition was too much.

Up 44-26 at the half, Creighton opened the second half with six straight points — a dunk from Patton, a steal and a transition layup from Cole Huff — to take a 22-point lead. With 19 minutes to go, St. John’s coach Chris Mullin used his final timeout (he’d bizarrely burned through the rest in the first half) to try to end the run. He was not successful. A defensive stop and a dunk from Khryi Thomas pushed the lead out to 24, and was the Jays’ eighth straight made basket.

St. John’s made several runs to get back into the game, and the Bluejay lead hovered around a dozen points for most of the half. That’s a dangerous place to be, as Butler discovered after leading nearly the entire game before blowing a 10-point lead late to the Red Storm a week ago. Two key sequences kept St. John’s at bay.

The first came with just under 10 minutes to play, and the Bluejays nursing a 10-point lead 59-49. Ponds and Marcus Foster traded barbs during the set-up for an inbounds pass, and were issued double-technicals. Things were getting heated, and Greg McDermott responded with a pair of set plays to get dunks for Foster. His emphatic pose after each dunk probably didn’t go over well with the Johnnies or their fans, but it was a helluva answer to both their run and their jawing.

The second came four minutes later, when LoVett hit a bucket to cut the lead to eight with 6:15 left. Thoughts of St. John’s late-game comeback in this same floor a week ago couldn’t help but seep in. Jays fans were tweeting it, St. John’s fans were thinking it, but Bluejay players were having none of it.

Mo Watson immediately silenced the crowd with a three-pointer off of a kick-out pass from Patton to push the lead back out to 11, then followed it with another three moments later to more or less ice the game.

Following an emotional home loss to #1 Villanova, the Bluejays responded with a tough, mentally-focused approach that led to a decisive win. St. John’s players noted as much.

“They were the toughest team we’ve played physically,” LoVett said in the postgame press conference. “They’re tough and it’s going to be hard to beat them.”

Ponds agreed. “By far, they were the toughest team we played. They’re tough. It’s going to be hard to beat them on the road, the way they came in here and beat us.”

They Said It:

“It goes without saying, this is a really good win for us. The last three games that St. John’s has played have been really impressive. Not just that they’ve scored the ball, but their execution defensively compared to some of the games earlier in the season, there was much more of a purpose to what they were doing defensively. You can see the young guys grow up as you watch them on film from the start of the season to more recently. I was scared to death of this game. Fortunately our guys were really good defensively in the first half. I thought that the shots St. John’s made was challenged shots and our execution was good, we didn’t turn it over much. We were able to build that lead and fortunately we had the lead because we knew they would make a run. Fortunately we were able to hang on and win in the end.” -Greg McDermott in postgame press conference

“”Justin’s best basketball is still ahead of him. He continues to grow and improve. A lot of it has to do with his work ethic and how he understands the value of competing on a consistent basis. As good as he was offensively the first half, he was equally as good defensively. That wasn’t the case the first five or six games of the season. His low post game continues to develop… His patience down there and his footwork is off the charts. He’s been a pleasure to coach and he’s obviously a special young talent.

He might even be surprising himself. We saw Justin as a junior in high school. To see his growth in just a few years is incredible. A lot of it is because he loves the game. He willingly takes coaching and his teammates trust him. That’s not often the case with a freshman. But they know they can throw it up to 12-13 feet and he’s going to go get it and get them an assist instead of a turnover. He continues to just get better. Nothing surprises me because I’ve seen the potential in him for a long time.” -Greg McDermott in postgame press conference

“Anybody that watched the Syracuse game was scared, because that was a heck of a performance. Butler beat Villanova tonight and St. John’s just beat Butler. It’s a team that is learning how to win and is very confident in what they were doing. Shamorie Ponds and Marcus LoVett are really talented, young guards. They put pressure on you every single time. When you have guys that can get to the rim and you have five guys shooting essentially 40 percent from the three-point line, it puts a lot of stress on your defense. Fortunately for us we were able to run them off the three-point line in the first half and [Justin Patton] was able to protect the rim.” -Greg McDermott in postgame press conference

“Coach Mullin has a great young team. They have a lot of really good pieces… We recruited Shamorie and I watched him play a ton and his development has been incredible. He’s spent a tremendous amount of time on his game and his handles and his floater. We just weren’t sure how quickly, with his body, he could do it in the BIG EAST but he’s doing it pretty well for a young player. Shamorie is stronger and I think his ability to shoot the three, if you leave him open then you’re going to pay for it. You wonder if a high school player can transfer his talent to the next level, if he can slow himself down and play with the correct pace and he’s really good at that. It’s hard to speed him up. That’s usually a sign of a mature guard. Young guards you can hurry them up and get them out of rhythm, but that’s really difficult to do with [Shamorie Ponds].” -Greg McDermott in postgame press conference

“The league is really, really good… There are no easy games. Teams are extremely well coached and there are great players throughout the league. Sometimes the other team makes a few more shots and wins the game; I thought that was the case in our game with Villanova. My guess is Butler made a few more than Villanova from the perimeter tonight. Nothing comes easy. It’s a really good basketball league and frankly everything we could have hoped for, being one of the newcomers to the league. It’s an honor to be a part of the BIG EAST and it’s an honor to do our part to make the league as strong as it can possibly be.” -Greg McDermott in postgame press conference

(Thanks to Friend of WBR Jaden Daly from Daly Dose Of Hoops for the postgame audio these quotes were transcribed from!)

You Said It:

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