Creighton hasn’t started 0-3 in the Valley, or 5-9 overall, since 1993-94…colloquially known as Rick Johnson’s final, disastrous year as coach. Yep, that’s how bad things have gotten. We’re having to go back to the Rick Johnson Era to find seasons to compare to this one. Jeez.
Ordinarily, you’d look at a road game against the 6-6, 0-2 Purple Aces as a potential trap. Its the sort of game previous Jays teams would maddeningly find a way to lose. Remember the Top 10 ranking the Jays had in February 2003? Yeah, that went away after a loss at Roberts Stadium to the Aces. And two years ago, one of Evansville’s three MVC wins came at the expense of the Jays.
But enough with depressing facts. Lets get some rainbows-and-unicorns action going on in this house party! Yeeha, positivity can be fun!
On Friday, Kenny Lawson recorded his second double-double of the season with 13 points and 14 rebounds. P’Allen Stinnett scored 19 points, and with 26 today, would join the 1,000 point club for his career in just his 80th game, the quickest to do so since Rodney Buford. Rodzilla inexplicably scored his first 1,000 points in just 59 (!) games.
Creighton’s bench is outscoring its opponents bench by 61 points for the season. They’re dead-even in points in the paint for the season. They’re +6 in points off turnovers.
There, now I feel a little sunnier. You bet. Back to today’s game…
Two years ago, Creighton started 0-2 in the league for the first time in the Altman Era. One of those losses was the infamous home blowout to Illinois State where the Osiris Eldridge Nightmare began for P’Allen Stinnett. The other came on the road to Indiana State. Afterward, the team had a players-only meeting, sorted some things out, and rattled off five straight wins. The first of those wins came at Evansville.
After Friday’s loss to Indiana State, the team once again had a players-only meeting. Will the result be similar? With Wichita State twice in the next five games, it would be pretty awesome if it was.
The team’s confidence is such that what ought to be a win today will wind up being a toss-up. I honestly don’t know what to expect at this point. A 20-point win seems as likely as blowing a 20-point lead. Pull out your computer, watch the webcast out of one eye while watching Week 17 of the NFL out of the other, and hope for the best. Its all we can do right now.
One Big Paragraph with Lots O’Dots™: The Aces have a young team, and now they’re a young team playing without two of their key veterans, usually a recipe for disaster. Junior guard Kavon Lacey will miss another two weeks after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery in mid-December, while Sophomore James Haarsma, the MVC’s number one rebounder statistically and the team’s second-best scorer, sat out Friday’s game at Northern Iowa with a nagging foot injury that flared up again last week. Haarsma may not play again today, which would be an edge for Creighton … Evansville Sophomore Denver Holmes scored a career-high 17 in the loss to Northern Iowa. Holmes had never led the Aces in scoring until the last three games, and he’s led them every game since with 16, 15 and 17 points. As Panon wrote on Friday quoting the coach from Teen Wolf, never play cards with a guy with a city for a first name … Standout freshman Colt Ryan had success early, but now that opposing coaches have film on him, he’s struggled to adjust. He remains the Aces leading scorer at 13ppg, but he was able to take only four shots and was held scoreless by UNI on Friday. In Tuesday’s MVC opener against Missouri State, he scored all nine of his points in the final four minutes of a 74-60 loss.
The Last Time They Played: Creighton won 89-84 in a late-February game in Omaha. The 89 points were the most they scored in a game all season, and it was good timing: both of Evansville’s seniors got hot on the same night. Jason Holsinger had 30 points, while Shy Ely had 26 — and Ely missed a potential game-tying three-pointer with 11 seconds left. The first matchup ended in a Jays victory going away, 79-57.
The Series: Creighton leads the all-time series with Evansville by a 21-9 margin, including an 8-7 mark in Evansville. The Jays have won three of their last four trips to Roberts Stadium and eight of the nine meetings overall in the series. The lone Evansville victory during that time came at Roberts Stadium on Feb. 13, 2008, when the Aces defeated the Bluejays 60-56 for one of only three MVC wins that season.
Gratuitous Linkage: The Breakfast Club, reimagined with DC Comics characters. Awesome.
Official Gametime Snack: Fritos and Chili Con Queso. Do it.
The Totally Random Song I’d Play Right Now if I was Still a Radio DJ: The Muppets sing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” This is a tour-de-force.
Prediction: Creighton 64, E’Ville 63. Kenny Lawson leads all scorers with 13.
Go Jays.
