Bluejay Beat:
Recap:
Two weeks after Villanova stole a game from Creighton in the final minutes when the Jays had controlled it for most of the night, CU did the same to Providence. The Friars turned 19 offensive rebounds into 25 second-chance points. They dictated tempo and forced the Jays to match their bullish style of play. Their star guard David Duke scored 36 points — 24 in a scorching second half where he made 9-of-11 overall and 4-of-5 from three-point range. They led 74-69 with 1:41 to play. But from that point forward, Creighton found another gear.
In a game that instantly moves near the top of any list of all-time classics in the Qwest/CenturyLink/CHI Health Center era, Creighton hit one clutch shot after another, got big defensive stops when they needed to, and ended the game on a 9-0 run to steal one back. Marcus Zegarowski’s three-pointer with 3.2 seconds to play proved to be the game-winner, and was the first time in six years that the Jays have made a go-ahead basket in the final 10 seconds of a win at home. The last? Doug McDermott’s three-pointer with 2.8 seconds left against St. John’s on January 28, 2014. The 9-0 rally marked the first time in eight years that Creightonโs won a game where it erased a two-possession deficit in the final two minutes at home. The last time THAT happened? Antoine Young’s buzzer-beater to cap a 10-3 run against Long Beach State on February 18, 2012.
“If you’d have told me before the game,” Greg McDermott said in his postgame radio interview, “when Marcus Zegarowski was so sick he couldn’t even walk, that he was going to hit the game-winner? Crazy. Kelvin (Jones) gets hurt, Christian (Bishop) gets in foul trouble, Ty-Shon (Alexander) hurts his knee, we had a lot going against us today. It was a crazy finish.”
Fighting the flu, Zegarowski got dizzy during warmups, went into the locker room for treatment, and didn’t return to the floor for final warmups. When he finally did join the team on the bench, he was guzzling Gatorade in mass quantities, and looking woozy. Three minutes before tipoff, the Jays scrambled to change the starting lineup and the assignments for the guys who began the game on the floor. Denzel Mahoney made his first start as a Bluejay. Damien Jefferson shifted to the three, where he rarely if ever plays. Ty-Shon Alexander became the primary ball handler and played point for the first time in two seasons.
Zegarowski checked in two minutes into the game, and while he said in the press conference afterward that “I’ll always try to suit up for my guys,” it was obvious that he was not himself. He committed three turnovers in his first three minutes on the floor. He twice missed layups from point-blank range.
When they fell behind 19-11 after seven minutes, it seemed like the game was on the ropes. A Providence team not known for their perimeter shooting prowess was 4-of-8 from three-point range. Creighton had two possessions in a row where they missed two layups under the basket each time, coming away empty handed both times. Their star point guard was under the weather and off his game. They were down by eight but it might as well have been 18.
Ty-Shon Alexander, coming off one of his worst games in a CU uniform, rallied his team. He scored five straight points to get the Jays back into it, including this long three from Ballock range:
And this drive where he made his defender look like he was playing on skates:
His shots were important, but his leadership was even moreso. “After the Georgetown game, Coach Mac and I had a really, really good discussion about both the mistakes and the body language that I can’t continue to have,” Alexander explained in a postgame radio interview. “We talked about how the rest of the team looks up to me, and to Mitch, and to Marcus. If I show that kind of body language, we’re going to lose. It’s bad for me and it’s bad for the team in general. We had a long, long discussion. He got into me. And it was 100% true, everything he was saying. So I came back to practice and got engaged, made sure everybody was in the right place, made sure everybody was listening and engaged, and made sure everybody was energized for this game.”
“I’m really, really proud of Ty,” McDermott added. “He realized some things this week about his body language and his approach to the team that weren’t where I wanted them to be. Once he took a look in the mirror, he realized that ‘you know what, it’s not where I want to be either.’ It takes a lot of courage to make those changes.”
He was in the midst of a solid first half of basketball, scoring nine points and holding Providence’s hot-shooting David Duke to just eight. But with 4:27 to go, he tried to draw a charge on Alpha Diallo, and crumbled to the court in pain. When he remained there for several minutes, it looked like the dreaded mid-January injury bug had once again come for the Bluejays, and taken out yet another in a long line of stars from their lineup.
Kelvin Jones soon joined him on the bench after re-injuring his ankle. Jones would not return, but Alexander did, with the knee injury appearing to be a hyperextension and not anything more severe. The Jays led 41-37 at the half with seemingly everything that could go wrong, going wrong.
Alexander played 18 second-half minutes, and wasted little time proving the knee was fine with this dribble drive into the paint early in the half. Moments later, he scored on an uncontested layup off of a backdoor cut, and a sigh of relief was mixed with the cheers inside of the arena.
CU led 49-43, but turned it over on five of their next 10 possessions and scored just twice. By the 11:50 mark, their lead was 51-50. Alexander was in noticeable pain, and at one point he yelled to his teammates loud enough that we heard it in our baseline seats, โYo, I canโt move!โ A 14-4 Providence run, featuring six turnovers in 11 possessions by the Jays, fueled a 57-53 Friar lead at the eight minute mark.
During that timeout, video boards inside the arena welcomed The Lumberjack back to Omaha, as Ethan Wragge was shown in his courtside seats.
Shortly after that timeout, Ballock hit a three reminiscent of #WraggeBombs of years past, a half-step in front of the sideline, and tied the game at 58.
But defensive lapses, particularly on Duke, began to take their toll. With 2:37 to go, the Friars led 70-67 as Duke scored 11 straight points and 16 of their last 22. He was red-hot and yet the Bluejays continued to help off of him and relax off of him on the perimeter, giving him space to take one open three after another. It was incredibly frustrating to watch him take control of the game while the Jays refused to budge from their gameplan, refused to face-guard him and deny him touches, refused to try someone else guarding him when Alexander’s throbbing knee left him a half-step slow.
With 2:18 to play, Duke drove into the paint for a jumper, his 13th straight point. On the next possession he was fouled and missed the front end of a one-and-one, but Diallo grabbed the offensive rebound from Mahoney’s hands, kicked it out to Duke, and he was fouled. This time he made both free throws. 74-69 Providence, 1:41 to play, and it honestly felt like that sequence would prove to be the dagger. Providence had won 20 straight games when they led by five or more with under two minutes left. Creighton had lost so many of these types of games, including twice in the last four years to these same Providence Friars (50-48 in 2016, 68-66 in 2017).
That foul, Alexander’s fourth, finally prompted the Jays to switch things up, and they put Mahoney onto Duke. It didn’t pay immediate dividends, but it was an underrated and important adjustment that made the defensive play of the game possible. More on that in a minute.
“It took all three of us (Zegarowski, Ballock, and himself) to rally the team and tell them, ‘This game isn’t over. There’s enough time left for us to win this game,'” Alexander said. “That’s exactly what we did. We won the game.”
Throbbing knee and all, Alexander immediately came down and hit an enormous three-pointer to cut the lead to 74-72.
They forced the ball out of Duke’s hands on the next trip down the floor, and when Diallo’s shot missed, Ballock cleared the board. Alexander drove into the circle, and calmly knocked down a jumper in traffic — off the glass, no less — to tie it. 36 seconds left, all tied at 74.
With the shot clock winding down on the next possession, Duke drove inside for a potential game-winner, but Mahoney — guarding him now instead of Alexander — stayed in front of him. He didn’t bite on any of Duke’s attempts to shake free, and when Duke slipped as he made his final cut, Mahoney tipped the ball out of his hands. Then he used his strength to secure the ball.
As loud as the arena was at that moment, it was about to get even louder. Zegarowski took the inbounds pass, drove the length of the floor, and with time ticking down, made his read — the red-hot Alexander, his number one option to take a game-winner, was covered in the corner. The defender in front of Zegarowski went under a ball screen, leaving him a window for a shot of his own.
He took it.
The Jays opted not to take a timeout to set up a final play, which was by design. McDermott said on his postgame radio interview that he instructed his team in the timeout prior to the Friars’ turnover that they would not stop the clock regardless of what happened on that possession.
“We didn’t want them to have the opportunity to switch to a zone, so we had what we wanted to do ready,” McDermott explained. “Then it was just a matter of Marcus making the read. They went under the screen, and ironically it wound up being the same shot that he missed at Georgetown to give us the lead with 1:40 left. It was the same look as the one tonight. You can’t control whether you make or miss that kind of shot, but you can control whether you’re prepared to take it. Marcus Zegarowski is prepared to take that kind of shot. He practices it over and over again. He didn’t hang his head when he missed the one at Georgetown, and came right back to hit a dagger tonight.”
In spite of flu symptoms that nearly sidelined him and led to one of his worst overall games of the year (six turnovers, zero second half points before his game-winner), Zegarowski hit the biggest shot of the season so far. In spite of a knee that was so stiff he had trouble moving, Alexander scored 15 second-half points including five straight to tie the game in the final 90 seconds. And he intercepted a full-court pass to seal the win after Zegarowski’s clutch shot.
Resilient? Absolutely. Gutsy? You bet.
“I can be sore tomorrow,” Alexander said.
