Last January, Creighton put an end to a two-game home losing streak to Drake. As the Bluejays program drifted away from the multiple trips to the NCAA Tournament in recent seasons, the Bulldogs claimed league regular season and tournament championships in 2008 and put together a four-game winning streak against CU in the process.
Each of the previous two Januarys, the Drake Bulldogs left Omaha with convincing, if not impressive, victories. In 2008, during one of the school’s most successful men’s hoops season in recent memory, the Bulldogs bested the Bluejays in overtime. Creighton couldn’t convert important possessions, nor get stops when the needed them, and Keno Davis notched Drake’s first win against CU in Omaha since the Bluejays blew a chance to win the regular season MVC title outright on Senior Night in 2002.
Then in 2009, with a lesser team, Drake stormed back from a 6-point halftime deficit to beat the Bluejays by 12. The Bulldogs shot 57% from the field in the second half of that game, while Dana Altman’s Jays hit at just a 23% clip in the second 20 minutes. The Bluejays would respond to the gut-wrenching loss, rattling off 11 straight wins and winning a share of the Valley regular season title in the process. But blowing that game against the Bulldogs cost the Jays what many in the fan base consider to be the one true measure of dominance in the conference: an outright regular season championship.
Since the 1995-1996 season, Creighton was 21-10 against Drake entering the two teams’ meeting on New Year’s Day. To the majority of Creighton fans who haven’t followed the program any longer than Dana Altman was its head coach, the Bluejays own their longtime rival just a few hours east on I-80. But in recent seasons, losses to Drake brought to the forefront the team’s nagging problems: extended defensive lapses, poor rebounding results, and the inability to emphatically shut the door on an opponent.
Sure, it is a smallish sample size, but the first year of the Greg McDermott Era seems intent on overcorrecting for those problems, especially as evidenced by the Bluejays’ current six-game winning streak. The 16-point win against the visiting Bulldogs is a microcosm of the major shift currently underway on the Hilltop.
- For the fifth consecutive game, Creighton limited its opponent to less than 40% shooting from the field.
- For the fifth consecutive game, Creighton held its opponent to 60 points or fewer.
- For the sixth time in seven games, Creighton outrebounded its opponent.
- For the second time in two MVC games, the Bluejays claimed a double-digit lead during the second half and refused to relinquish it.
For all of Altman’s public bellyaching about the problems his last few Creighton teams had playing defense and rebounding, the coach reportedly favored more practice time spent on offense than defense.
The reverse is true under the new staff, a fact punctuated by the Bluejays’ win against Drake on New Year’s Day. And while the Bluejays aren’t putting up consistently crushing offensive performances, their defensive improvement has been steady — and, at times, stifling.
In their four losses this season, the Bluejays allowed the victor to shoot better than 45% from the field three times. The fourth loss, on the road at Nebraska, saw Creighton hold the Huskers to 37% shooting from the field. That game, although a loss for CU, marked the first in what would be a marked improvement in the Bluejays’ field goal percentage defense statistic. Only once since the Jays allowed the BYU Cougars to hit 48% of their shots has Greg McDermott’s team given up an opponent field goal percentage better than 40% (42% to Saint Joseph’s, during a CU win).
There is no question the defense has improved as the season’s gone on. But there is probably some connection between the quality of opponents the Bluejays have played and the shrinking shooting percentages those teams posted against Creighton’s defense. So to, perhaps, is there a correlation between the Bluejays’ improvement on the boards and the opponents with whom CU is sharing the paint. Two games after simply overpowering Samford on the glass, 45-19, the Bluejays beat Drake on the boards 45-24. Sandwiched between those two efforts was a 34-30 rebounding edge on the road against Illinois State, which featured four Jays grabbing 5 or more boards.
Against the Bulldogs New Year’s night, freshman Doug McDermott and senior Kenny Lawson each posted double-doubles (the first time two Bluejays recorded double-doubles in the same game since last March, when Lawson and Justin Carter did so in a loss to Bradley in Saint Louis). They did so thanks to impressive rebounding results on opposite ends of the court. For McDermott, he continued to pad his team-leading offensive rebounding totals, snaring 4 against Drake to go with 6 defensive caroms. Lawson, meanwhile, cleaned up the defensive glass, with 11 of his game-high 16 total rebounds coming on Drake’s side of the court. On an evening when an inconsistent and groan-inducing officiating crew handcuffed the Valley’s most physical rebounder, Gregory Echenique, the senior and the freshman shouldered the rebounding effort.
McDermott finished with a career-high 28 points in 34 minutes. It was one of the better matchups for arguably the best freshman in the Valley, as the Drake frontcourt doesn’t exactly boast many beefy forwards. Lawson added 14 points for his double-double, joining McDermott and Antoine Young (15 points, 10-10 from the free-throw line) as the team’s only double-digit scorers. The three of them, along with Echenique, provide Greg McDermott with a fearsome foursome from which any individual could produce an exceptional performance any night.
And because of that, because Young and Echenique can carry the team in Normal and then McDermott and Lawson can do the same against Drake, the Bluejays survived the first week of Valley play without a loss. This team still needs a consistent shooter to emerge as an outside threat, with Ethan Wragge ailing and possibly finished for the season and both Darryl Ashford and Kaleb Korver capable but not yet locked in. But as long as the Jays get production offensively from the majority of Young, Lawson, McDermott, and Echenique each night, as well as solid defense and resolute rebounding, Creighton will keep most Missouri Valley Conference games close at the least. Or, you know, they could beat Valley teams by double-digits, which is what they did during their 2-0 start to conference play. That’s fine, too.
