Key Stats:
Creighton assists on 22 of their 33 made baskets, keeps the rebounds basically even (37-36 in favor of ASU), and shoots lights out in the second half — 16-24 overall, 6-9 from three-point range and 13-18 from the line.
If there’s a nit to pick, it’s this: ASU grabbed 15 offensive boards and had a 15-4 edge in second chance points. When CU is shooting like they did Tuesday night, that doesn’t much matter, but there will be nights in the Big East where they don’t — and if it happens against a team like Seton Hall with elite rebounders, that will be a problem.
Standout Performance:
What can you say about Toby Hegner and Isaiah Zierden? The two former starters, now playing the role of complimentary pieces off the bench, came up huge on a night where the Jays desperately needed them to. They combined to shoot 8-11 from three-point range, scored 12 points apiece, and did most of the damage in the first half when the Jays were digging out of an early hole — they made their first five three-point shots.
Zierden played solid defense, as well, which was huge after Khyri Thomas picked up two early fouls and had to spend huge chunks of the first half on the bench. His strip-steal of Tra Holder under the basket mid-way through the opening half, leading to a transition three by Marcus Foster, was one of the best defensive plays of Zierden’s career.
As for Hegner, he’s averaged 7.5 points and 7.7 rebounds a game over the last four outings including games of 8/10 at Nebraska, 10/9 against Longwood and last night’s 12/9 while playing no more than 18 minutes in any of the four games. His outside shooting stroke is back (5-8 in those four games) but he’s added the versatility to score inside, too (5-11 on two-point shots) and even above the rim, as his back-to-back dunks against the Huskers showed. Hegner’s aggressive on the boards in a way most of his teammates are not, he creates rebounds for others with good block-out technique, and has quietly become a solid, reliable defender down low. He’s carved out a role backing up both Cole Huff at the ‘4’ and Justin Patton at the ‘5’, and what a luxury to have a player like that as a backup.
Recap & Analysis:
The first two minutes of Tuesday’s game could not have gone much worse for Creighton: they turned it over on three of their first four possessions, Khyri Thomas picked up two fouls, and they trailed 11-2 with ASU scoring on an uncontested layup, an alley-oop, a three-point play and a three-point shot. The home crowd was standing, and the Jays were reeling.
To make matters worse, Mo Watson was playing despite having the flu and throwing up during the game; he’d join Thomas with two fouls on the bench midway through the opening period.
Enter Hegner and Zierden. With the Jays trailing 13-6, the duo combined to score 15 of the team’s next 17 points, calmly making five 3-pointers from spots all around the arc in the span of six minutes. Their shooting exploits brought the team back, and then put them over the top; Zierden’s third three of the run, with 11:38 to go, tied the game at 20. Hegner’s second three of the run, coming 30 seconds after Zierden had tied the game, gave CU the lead 23-22. Foster then came up with a steal and a fast break dunk to push the lead out to 25-22, silence the crowd, and force Bobby Hurley to call timeout. The 19-9 run, fueled almost entirely by Hegner and Zierden, was the turning point in the game — Arizona State led just once more, for less than a minute.
Creighton took a 45-40 lead into the locker room, which brought back memories of the 2015 meeting in Omaha where they led by eight only to succumb to an early-second-half defensive breakdown. There would be no deja vu.
The Bluejays made 10 of their first 13 shots after halftime, and over the first nine minutes, built a 20-point lead thanks to the kind of all-encompassing offensive firepower they’ve shown so often this year. In the first three minutes alone, there were a pair of acrobatic drives from Watson, a thunderous dunk by Justin Patton, and a jumper and a three-pointer by Foster to push the lead to 56-46. They followed that with a three from Hegner, a pair of buckets at the rim from Patton, and a three from Thomas, and another three from Zierden to post a 71-51 lead at the 11:02 mark. Audible chants of “C-U! C-U!” came through on the ESPN2 broadcast from the huge contingent of Creighton fans at the game, as the ASU crowd sat in stunned silence.
To their credit, the Sun Devils refused to go quietly. They scrapped and clawed their way to buckets on eight straight possessions, and eventually cut the lead to ten at 80-70. ASU got 24 points apiece from Tra Holder and Torian Graham, but it was the big second half from Obinna Oleka that kept them in the game. Oleka was a one-man wrecking machine on the glass, which is something I feared might happen when I scouted ASU for the Primer. For the game, he had 16 rebounds, five on the offensive glass, and scored 19 points. In the second half alone, he had 13 points and 11 boards — four offensive.
As ASU hung around, the Jays sweated out the final three minutes with Watson on the bench after he fouled out with 2:46 to play. Memories of another second-half collapse surfaced, but this time it wasn’t last season’s ASU game — rather the game at Georgetown where Watson fouled out and they choked away an 11-point lead in 2-1/2 minutes. And with the combination of ASU’s press forcing Tyler Clement into hurried passes and turnovers, and the Jays attempting 10 free throws in those final 2:46, things were quite stressful.
Thankfully ASU didn’t capitalize on the turnovers, and CU made seven of the 10 free throws to ice a 96-85 win. It moves them to 12-0 for the first time since 2003-04, and just the third time ever. Next week the defending Big East Tournament and defending National Champion visit Omaha in the span of four days; if the Bluejays are 14-0 after those two, even the doubters voting in silly click-bait polls on Omaha.com will have a hard time peddling their pessimism.
They Said It:
“I thought that first one was short, but I knew coming in that these rims were extremely soft. They had a lot of give, so I gave it enough arc and enough rotation to have a pretty good chance to bounce around and go in. That’s exactly what happened on the first one.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame
“Tonight, there was a lot of other things going on for the last four or five days, and then before that Finals. So for the last ten days you had a lot of outside stuff going on. So what I wanted to do today, I had a lot of emotion. And I normally don’t play with a lot of emotion, but today I wanted to bring some energy and bring some emotion for the team so that they could feed off of that. I talked to the coaches, and they really look to me as a fifth year senior as a leader so I really wanted to do that today. That’s stepping out of character for me. I’m more of a hold-everything-in person who tries to keep my emotions in check and focus on my game. But in talking to the coaches, we had a lot of things going on, with Christmas coming up and everything, so they wanted me to bring some energy and emotion for everyone to feed off of.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame
“Memories of the North Texas game two years ago before Christmas were in my mind, and moreso what (Arizona State) did to us last year at home. It was, in my mind, disrespectful to celebrate on our floor like that. But that’s the game. I remembered that, harvested the memory in my mind, and every shot I made I just kept thinking ‘Foot on the throat, foot on the throat, we’re going to do that to you guys, and then we’re just going to walk off the floor calmly.’ Just like you’re supposed to.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame
“Coming off the bench and playing fewer minutes has been an adjustment, but honestly I give credit to my Dad who gave me a great idea. Instead of getting in a rhythm during a shooting workout, shoot ten and then stop. Take a walk around the gym for 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes. Then come back and shoot ten more. Try to make seven out of ten, eight out of ten. Now my rhythm is broken up. That’s a little more game-like, and better prep for coming in off the bench for four or five minutes and then coming out and sitting. So I really have to give a lot of credit to my Dad for that.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame
“Being 12-0 is a big confidence booster for us. And the great thing about it is, we haven’t been perfect. We haven’t played our best yet. We’ve had bits and pieces throughout the 12 games that have been great, but not one great game yet. So we’ve got things to work on and that’s the exciting part.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame
“Toby Hegner and Isaiah Zierden were huge tonight. And with Khyri getting the two quick fouls, besides what Z did offensively early to get us back in the game, defensively he was rock solid. I talk all the time about what a luxury it is for us to have those two guys. They played relaxed tonight, they were really, really good. I couldn’t be more proud of them. And what a great example to our younger players, to be ready when your number is called. Because if either of two guys don’t handle the situation the way they have, and Zach was certainly in the same boat before he got hurt, they’re always saying ‘What can I do to help us win?’ Not one time has either one of them complained about coming off the bench. They know we trust them and they were big tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“Justin Patton needs to bang his knee before every game (laughs). Man, he was special tonight in the second half. Some of his passes, and the way he controlled the lane defensively was so active. More active than he’s been. We’ve got to get him to rebound better, but he knows that. We got contributions from a lot of places tonight. Maurice was sick, and was throwing up during the first half. When I took him out after his second foul, he ran to the locker room to throw up. He’s got the flu. But we survived that. We survived some foul trouble, and got out of here with a win.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“We turned it over on three out of the first four possessions, and on the first play Cole’s wide open but he’s running a play — they ran two guys, Cole went to screen like he’s supposed to, and Maurice saw him wide open so he threw a pass that hit him in the chest. He wasn’t looking for it and it hit him in the chest and went out of bounds. Those things happen. Their switching man-to-man defense bothered us a little bit early. Once we settled down, I felt like offensively we were going to be fine. But defensively, I felt like we had to stop them. We had to sit down and guard. Starting four guards made it difficult initially; we were not anticipating they would do that. We had some mismatches out there from the start. And as the game went on, we adjusted to that better.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“As we turn the page to Big East play, there’s a couple of things to address. Defensively, I still feel like we can improve. They scored well over one point per possession tonight, and I feel like we should be better than that. Part of that is rebounding, and part of that is not turning it over because some of those turnovers lead to uncontested baskets. Those are the key things. But as I told the team, let’s celebrate a little bit. They’re only the third Creighton team since 1940-something to start 12-0, and no one can take that away from them…but we’re only a third of the way done. The big prize is still ahead. And obviously, with what we’ve done and with our ranking, we’ll get everybody’s best shot. A lot of times early in the game, you’ll get their greatest shot because they’re so hyped up. The last couple games we haven’t started the way we’ve wanted to, either. But we’ll take tomorrow off, and I’m trusting that they’ll get in the gym on the 22nd and the 23rd so that when we come back on the night of the 25th we haven’t lost any conditioning.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I want to wish all of our fans a very Merry Christmas. It’s been great fun. And the crowd we had tonight, I mean to come to Scottsdale and have this kind of crowd? That’s unbelievable. I’m sure there were some Arizona State fans looking around and thinking ‘What in the heck is going on?’ That’s what makes this job special. Obviously our med school has a big presence down here, but it’s awesome to get this kind of following on the road. It makes it easy to recruit, when you know you’re going to have fans everywhere you go that have your back. That’s really, really special.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
You Said It:
https://twitter.com/espncbb/status/811390738017570817
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/811395519293440001
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/811396257423855616
https://twitter.com/j_a_schulte/status/811396502975344640
https://twitter.com/ryanholmgren/status/811396912624631808
https://twitter.com/ryanholmgren/status/811396685524045824
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/811402752412643328
https://twitter.com/mue11er/status/811403127068860416
https://twitter.com/dannyobyrne/status/811403148266995712
https://twitter.com/prspcderek/status/811408334091862016
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/811408506565718016
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/811412804460646400
https://twitter.com/ryanholmgren/status/811413988072427520
https://twitter.com/pbmrry/status/811421344399233024
https://twitter.com/mue11er/status/811422028930502656
https://twitter.com/stricklymeg/status/811417903056691202
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/811416687371173888
https://twitter.com/yendorletsek/status/811430579606528001
