[dropcap]Creighton’s[/dropcap] early-season offensive assault continued on Tuesday night, as they rolled up 103 points in a 25-point win over UTSA. They scored 61 points in the first half alone, the most points they’ve scored in a first half of any game since February 3, 1990 — way back in the Harstad/Gallagher Era. They scored 61 points in the first half that night at the Civic against Drake, making 69% of their shots in the half, just slightly better than the 65.6% the Jays made on Tuesday night.
Those 61 points also equalled the CenturyLink Center arena record for most points scored in ANY half, tying the mark set in 2007 by the Jays against Houston Baptist when they scored 61 second-half points. They also continued their torrid pace; after scoring 30 fastbreak points on Saturday against Texas Southern, they added 24 more against UTSA. That means they’re more than a third of the way to last year’s total (143) after TWO GAMES.
Their offensive prowess will get a stiff test tonight when they travel to historic Assembly Hall in Bloomington to take on the 14th ranked Indiana Hoosiers. It’s a battle of two very similarly-styled clubs. Since the start of the 2010-11 season when Greg McDermott took over at Creighton, the Jays have been the nation’s most accurate team from three-point range — they’re 1517-3859 from deep in that time (39.3%). Over that same span, Indiana is fifth (1195-3066, 39.0%).
In those five seasons, Creighton ranks first in most games shooting 50% or better on field goals and 40% or better on three-point field goals (61) while Indiana is 12th (44); first in most games shooting 40% or better on three-pointers (94) while Indiana is fourth with 83; third in most games shooting 50% or better on field goals (76) while Indiana is sixth (70); and second in most games shooting 60% or better on field goals (15) while Indiana is seventh (11). In other words, over a five-year span, you’re looking at two of the very best offensive teams in the country.
Defensively, they’ve both struggled, especially recently and ESPECIALLY compared to their offenses. Last year, Indiana ranked as the 9th best adjusted offense in the country according to KenPom, while their defense was 214th. Creighton ranked 62nd in offense and 151st in defense according to that same metric. That trend has continued for both squads early this season. This could — I hesitate to say “will”, but it’s a good bet — be an old-fashioned college basketball shootout, with both teams scoring in the 80s or 90s. They both can score in bunches, and they both need to because their defenses struggle to stop the other team from doing the same.
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Indiana returns four starters and nine of their 15 lettermen from last year’s 20-14 team that lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to Wichita State (oddly enough, here in Omaha). They have five players averaging in double figures, led by James Blackmon Jr. (18.5 ppg., 3.0 spg.), Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell (17.5 ppg., 7.5 apg.) and Troy Williams (13.0 ppg., 6.5 rpg.). All three players are among the Wooden Award Preseason Top 50, giving Indiana the extremely rare honor of having three players on the list from the same team.
Blackmon, a 6’4″ sophomore guard, set the Indiana freshman record for three-pointers made with 77 a year ago and was an Honorable Mention All-Big Ten player. He averaged 15.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, and shot 38.7% from three-point range. He’s picked right back up where he left off, scoring 37 points in two games, and making 7-14 three-pointers.
6’7″, 215 pound forward Troy Williams has gotten off to a hot start in his junior year. After averaging 13.0 points and 7.4 rebounds as a sophomore (ranking third in the B1G in that category), he’s scored 26 points in two games, grabbed 13 rebounds and gone 10-17 from the floor. He was described as a “freak athlete who is the best playmaker on the team in terms of finishing plays at the rim” by Inside The Hall in our pregame Q&A with them.
Robert Johnson was second on the team in assists a year ago, but the 6’3″ sophomore guard has been a bit careless with the ball so far this year. He does have eight assists in two games, but also has six turnovers. He’s scored 19 points in two games, right in line with his average of 8.9 from a year ago, and he’s 5-9 from three point range.
And then there’s Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell, the senior guard who’s a Preseason All-American, Cousy and Wooden Award candidate, and perhaps the best player in the B1G. After a junior season where he averaged 16.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 4.8 assists a game while leading the team in three-pointers made (82-197, 41.6%) and field goals (181-412, 43.9%), he’s off to an even better start — he’s scored 35 points in two games, going 13-22 from the floor, 5-10 from three-point range, and has 15 assists with just five turnovers.
Ferrell has made a three-pointer in 67 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the nation. He’s moving up the Indiana career leader board in several categories, and will pass some legendary names as the season goes along: he has 1,414 points in his IU career, which ranks 20th in school history; he has 453 career assists, sixth best; and he has 198 threes in his IU career, which ranks fourth in school history.
Among the other contributors, freshman Thomas Bryant, a 6’10”, 245-pound recruit out of Rochester, NY, is averaging 11 points and 7.5 rebounds after two games and gives them a legit post threat, which is something the Hoosiers lacked a year ago. Nick Zeisloft, a 6’4″ senior guard, led the B1G in three-point shooting in conference games a year ago (51.4%), and wasn’t too shabby overall either (63-140, 45.0%). He’s 5-8 from long range so far this year, and had 15 points against Austin Peay. And senior Max Bielfeldt, a fifth-year senior who played for Michigan the last three years and was named their Sixth Man of the Year as a junior, has 20 points and 10 rebounds in the first two games.
Vegas pegs the Hoosiers as 12.5 point favorites tonight, and KenPom has them as 13 point favorites with an 86% chance of victory. It’s a steep test — not only is Indiana one of the nation’s best teams, their home court is among the most intimidating in the country. For the Jays to have a chance, they need Mo Watson to stay out of foul trouble so he can be the floor general for as much of the game as possible. Malik Albert was terrific on Tuesday backing him up, but Albert playing 20-25 minutes at point guard in his first D1 road game is not a recipe for success. They need to get off to a good start; falling behind early, and allowing the Assembly Hall crowd to get boisterous, could be fatal for an inexperienced team playing together on the road for the first time. And they need to play at least passable defense, because fighting offensive fire with fire on Indiana’s home court seems like a foolish idea.
Quick Notes on the Hoosiers:
- Friday’s win over Eastern Illinois was the 1,000th home victory in Indiana’s history. 535 of those wins have come at Assembly Hall.
- The Hoosiers have used a huge run to put away each of its games this season. In exhibition play against Ottawa, IU went on a 23-0 run midway through the second half and in the first half against Bellarmine, the Hoosiers broke the game open with an 18-0 spurt. In regular season play against EIU, the Hoosiers closed out the final 8:22 of the first half with a 27-3 outburst, and also went on a 35-17 second-half run for a 10-minute period against Austin Peay.
- Against Austin Peay, the Hoosiers forced 23 turnovers, the most by an IU opponent since December, 2011 against Stetson. In addition, IU had 14 steals, the most for the Hoosiers since November, 2011 against Butler. Against Eastern Illinois, the Hoosiers matched their 14-15 season lows of first half points allowed (17) and points allowed in a game (49).
- Tom Crean is in his eighth year as head coach of the Hoosiers. Over the last four+ years, IU is 95-45, averaging 23 wins per season compared to 20 from 1995-2008.
Bluejay Bytes:
- Creighton has won its last seven games against teams from the Big Ten, doing so by an average of 14 points per game. All of them have been by eight points or more, with six of them by double-figures. And Greg McDermott is 20-12 in his career against teams that are currently in the Big Ten, including a 7-2 mark on the Creighton sideline. (Insert your own joke here about how those stats might be different against a tougher B1G slate, since most of the wins came against the bottom tier of the conference. AHEM.)
- Creighton drained 15 three-pointers in Tuesday’s win over UTSA, their most three-pointers made in any game since setting a Big East record with 21 treys on January 20, 2014 at No. 4 Villanova. It was the fifth time in six seasons under Greg McDermott that Creighton has made 15 or more three-pointers. Unsurprisingly, the Bluejays have won all five of those games.
The Series / The Last Time They Played:
Creighton is 2-1 all-time against Indiana, winning games in Omaha in 1920 and 1923 before falling to the second-ranked Hoosiers in December of 1974, 71-53. Greg McDermott has never faced Indiana, nor Tom Crean, while Crean has never faced Creighton.
That most recent meeting was part of the four-team Indiana Classic, along with Nebraska and SMU. The Jays led briefly, 6-4, but Quinn Buckner hit back-to-back layups to give the Hoosiers the lead, and they’d not trail again. A dominant inside game punished the Bluejay big men; Indiana took a 39-22 lead at the half, and built a 65-31 lead with 11:32 to go.
The Hoosiers’ post players also played lockdown defense on their Bluejay counterparts, including Doug Brookins, who came into the game averaging 20 points a night but scored just two points on 1-9 shooting. CU committed 27 turnovers, and were outrebounded 49-39 by a team that finished the regular season undefeated at 29-0. IU would finish 31-1, losing in the Elite Eight to Kentucky, preventing them from having back-to-back undefeated national championships as they’d go 32-0 the next season and capture the title.
Gratuitous Linkage:
Inside the Hall has some terrific content dissecting the Hoosiers’ first two games, and previewing the Jays. Their “Film Session” breaks down the win over Austin Peay, while their game preview does a nice job of introducing their readers to CU.
What the Other Side is Saying:
“There is no doubt that we are playing an extremely fast, very energetic, very tough opponent. It is going to take all of us going all out to have a shot to squeak out a win. They move with or without the ball, they play with tremendous purpose, and their spacing is as good as I have seen. If we were not playing them we would be using them as a template for what spacing looks like. Obviously we are showing some of that when we watch the film preparing for them. Their commitment to the corners and to getting the ball thrown ahead is tremendous. They look in midseason form with that. They are physical. They have great presence inside at the rim. They play very well together.”
“If this team (Creighton) is the same team I am watching on the film, and they finish where they are projected in the Big East, then the Big East is the best conference in basketball by far. They are way better than that.”
“They do three things extremely well outside of shooting, and they all shoot the ball from what I can see: they run the court extremely hard, when they drive it and they pound it, which makes it hard to take away from them, and they do a great job of offensive rebounding. The way Watson passes the ball – 12 assists and 4 turnovers in two games this season – he is outstanding. The way they move the ball, we all have a hard job tomorrow night because you have got to be alert and aware. You cannot watch the ball or someone will be cutting behind you or standing wide open for a three in the corner.”
-Indiana Head Coach Tom Crean at his weekly press conference
This Date in Creighton Hoops History:
Last year on this date, the Bluejays toppled 18th ranked Oklahoma by erasing an 18-point second half deficit in a 65-63 win. The Jays started out struggling, finishing the first half with just six made field goals on 25 attempts, including 2-of-14 from beyond the arc.
Matt DeMarinis takes it from there with his excellent postgame:
The second half began exactly as the first, with the Sooners throwing the first punch and going on a 7-0 run to open up their largest lead of the game at 42-24 after only 1:30 had ticked off the clock. With the crowd silenced and the Bluejay players shell-shocked, McDermott called a timeout and told his team that it wasn’t going to end like this.
“He said we’re not this team who just gets blown out,” said sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden, who made his first career start in tonight’s game. “I think we found ourselves and got back to getting a stop on defense and running in transition.”
“We had a defeated look on our face,” McDermott said of what he saw when he looked around the huddle. “The timeout wasn’t about X’s and O’s. It was about who we want to be.”
The Bluejays decided they wanted to be fighters. Toby Hegner, Zierden, and senior point guard Austin Chatman proceeded to hit three-pointers on three of Creighton’s next four possessions to cut the Sooners’ lead to 44-33 with 16:32 to go. One possession at a time the Jays kept going. Stop, score, stop, score, stop, score until Isaiah Zierden put Creighton in front for the first time with a corner three that sent the crowd to their feet and capped off a 24-4 run, giving the Bluejays a 48-46 lead with 11:35 left in the game.
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day:
In looking back at that Oklahoma game last year, the soundtrack of the Primer was Guns N’Roses. As you know, I’m not superstitious AT ALL.
Soooo…with that said, GNR it is!
The Bottom Line:
An upset for the Bluejays changes the entire outlook for the season, from an outsiders perspective. As Indiana coach Tom Crean noted, the Creighton team he sees on film is way better than where they’re predicted to finish. A win turns some heads around the country onto that.
By February, the Jays will have improved enough to win this type of game. I just don’t think they’re *quite* there yet.
Indiana 87, Creighton 81
