Key Stats:
Creighton and St. John’s make the same number of shots (23), but Creighton had eight fewer attempts. The teams were virtually the same from the line, too, with the Jays going 11-13 from the stripe and St. John’s going 12-15.
The difference? Creighton turned it over 16 times, 10 of them on steals by St. John’s — compared to just five turnovers by the Red Storm. That led to a 17-4 advantage in points off turnovers, and kept the Jays from pulling away.
In two games against St. John’s this year, Creighton has committed 33 turnovers, and been outscored 41-12 on points off turnovers.
Standout Performance:
Marcus Foster, Khyri Thomas, and Toby Hegner scored 59 of the Jays’ 68 points — 24 from Foster, 19 from Thomas, and 16 from Hegner. Those three were 11-23 from three-point range and 21-39 overall.
Everyone else? 0-4 from three-point range and 2-9 from the floor.
While it was enough on Tuesday against St. John’s, that’s not a sustainable strategy going forward. “We won’t have many games we win if that continues,” Coach Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We need contributions from other people.”
McDermott would like those contributions to come within the offense, though, and not by forcing shots. And he felt like that happened in this game, but the shots just didn’t go in. “Davion got inside the paint with the ball a couple of times, got two shots blocked, and he missed a wide-open three. Mitch’s shot selection was good. Ty-Shon only took one shot but it was wide-open. Ronnie probably needs to find a few more ways to score for us, cutting with the ball, or putbacks on offensive rebounds. We need other guys to get us 8-12 points a game. If we don’t, that puts a lot of pressure on those three guys every night.”
Recap & Analysis:
Creighton made just three of their first 15 shot attempts, and turned it over four times in the early stages of Tuesday’s game at St. John’s. If they’d gotten anything less than a stellar defensive effort, they might have found themselves with a big deficit to overcome. Instead, they actually had a 5-3 lead after six minutes of play in a game only a Big Ten hoops fan could love. St. John’s hit their first shot of the game — a bucket in the paint from Tariq Owens — and then missed their next 10 shots, eight of them either three-pointers or mid-range jumpers, all of them bricks.
CU did a good job defending the high ball screen, and kept the Red Storm from getting dribble penetration. Like they did in Omaha, they forced them to become a jump shooting team, and that’s what you want the Johnnies to do. Khyri Thomas blanketed leading scorer Shamorie Ponds, and kept him from getting started — Ponds missed his first six shots, and was scoreless for the first 16 minutes of the game. And Marcus Foster drew two fouls on Marvin Clark II in the first three minutes, sending him to St. John’s bench for most of the half.
“I liked the fact that our defense kept us in the game until our offense got going,” McDermott commented on his postgame show. “They only scored three points the first 12 possessions of the game. We only scored five over that stretch, but a lot of times you’re down 10 points in that situation, the crowd’s into the game, and they’ve got confidence. Defensively we were terrific.”
And once the Bluejay offense found itself, they were off to the races. Thomas scored seven straight points — including a three-pointer, and three free throws after he was fouled in the corner attempting a trifecta — to put CU ahead. And then Foster jumped into a passing lane, intercepted a pass from Tariq Owens, and threw down an emphatic dunk. His primal scream after the dunk was audible on FS1’s mics; if he seemed a little more fiery than normal, it wasn’t your imagination.
Earlier in the week, a writer for SBNation’s Big East Coast Bias published an article scouting the Big East’s top NBA prospects. In that piece, he wrote that Foster was a below the rim talent who “lacked explosiveness” and had “minimal defensive impact.”
After some mostly good-natured roasting on Twitter by Jays fans (and a few Big East fans of other schools, as well), at some point the article in question was brought to Foster’s attention. It resulted first in this tweet with a slow-motion video of Foster dunking in practice, along with a shrugged shoulder emoji:
And then, at least partially, in these two dunks in the early minutes of Tuesday’s game.
Asked about it straight-up by 1620AM’s John Bishop on the postgame radio show, Foster gave an honest answer.
“It’s funny, you know? Because whoever wrote that article probably doesn’t watch our games. Tazz always guards the best player, and I guard the second-best player. And the athleticism thing, I don’t know where that came from because I’ve been athletic my whole career. Maybe I should send him a Twitter video of my dunks, or make a highlight package so they’ll see it. After the second dunk, that article was definitely in the back of my head when I yelled as I landed. So many people sent the link to me. And people can have their opinions, but it’s not going to change how I play. My focus is on winning a Big East Championship.”
Leading 24-18 after a three-point by Ponds with 4:05 left in the first half — his first made basket of the game — CU went on 12-3 run to open up a 15 point lead. They made four consecutive three-pointers, one from Foster and three from Hegner, and suddenly had the Red Storm on the ropes.
Hegner hit another three just 13 seconds into the second half, continuing the surge that had ended the first half.
“I kept telling them, ‘Owens can’t come back fast enough, I’m popping open,'” Hegner said on the postgame radio show. “My teammates found me at the right time in those situations, trusted me to take the shots, and fortunately they went in today.”
Foster hit back-to-back threes shortly after, and the Jays led by 16 at 45-29.
Then a funny thing happened. Ponds went to the bench to put ice on his ailing knee, and St. John’s went to work. Justin Simon became the focus of their offense, and he scored 13 points with five assists in the second half alone. Without Ponds as a creator off the dribble, the Red Storm simply put their heads down and drove at the rim, daring the Bluejays to stop them.
“We have a vulnerability at the rim, because I can’t jump like Tini can,” Hegner said. “So we have to sit down and guard one-on-one and that’s what it came down to tonight.”
Foster agreed. “They were moving a lot more without the ball after Ponds went out. And they were playing harder, honestly. When he went out, I’m sure everyone else knew they had to step up their game a little bit.”
Little by little, St. John’s crept back into the game. They forced 11 Bluejay turnovers in the second half, as their aggressiveness and length disrupted passing lanes and sped the Jays up. They got 18 points in the paint, a combination of refusing to settle for jump shots and the Jays’ guards not being able to keep them from driving at the rim. And with 3:05 to go, they cut the deficit to just five points at 63-58 following a layup by Justin Simon.
Things were getting a little nerve-wracking; it had been a 16-point lead, after all, and now the Red Storm were a couple of stops away from potentially changing the outcome of the game. Foster answered with a jumper on the other end as the shot clock ticked down, and then his teammates went 3-4 from the line in the final minute to seal the deal:
It was, at times, ugly. The Red Storm defense was a menace, as you knew they would be — as we detailed in the Primer, they’re one of the best teams in the country at doing exactly what they did to Creighton on Tuesday night.
They force a turnover on 24.5% of their opponent’s possessions, third best in the country. They average the eighth-most steals per game in the country at 9.3 per game (ripping away a steal on 12.6% of opponent’s possessions, fourth-best in the country). They’re sixth nationally in blocks, averaging 6.3 per game (blocking 19.0% of opponents shots, the third-best percentage in the country). They have a Big East-best +5.4 turnover margin. And they hold teams to just 43.6% shooting inside the arc, 12th best. They’re long, they’re athletic, they disrupt your passing lanes and your rhythm, and they get you sped up.
McDermott noted that his team did a great job taking care of the basketball in the first half, and said it was the primary reason they were able to build a double-digit lead. They had just five turnovers at the break, and had done a superb job of not allowing St. John’s to use their pressure to force them into poor decisions. It continued early in the second half, as the Jays’ built a 16 point lead.
“And then we got sloppy,” McDermott said. “We were telling our guys to get inside, set your feet, be strong with it — but when you’ve got hands and arms flying at you from all angles that’s easier said than done.”
11 second half turnovers led directly to 13 St. John’s points, which was more or less the number of points they shaved off the Bluejay lead. But CU escaped with a win, and afterward could afford to laugh a little bit. Talking with John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg on the postgame radio show, McDermott said — with tongue firmly planted in cheek — “They’re forcing 18 turnovers a game, and we’ve only had 17 and 16 in our two games against them. So maybe we’re bringing their average down slightly!”
They Said It:
You Said It:
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