Audrey Faber and the rest of the Bluejays got their shooting touch back on Wednesday night (Spomer / WBR)
It’s usually not a recipe for success when your shooting percentages are consistently lower than the plummeting temperature outside the arena, but that’s the reality Creighton’s perimeter players were dealing with through five games this season.
Senior guards Marissa Janning and MC McGrory entered Wednesday night’s home game against the Kansas Jayhawks each sporting a 28% field goal percentage for the season, and their fellow preseason All-Big East selection in sophomore forward Audrey Faber wasn’t much further ahead of them at 35%. Combined they only hit 15 of their 62 attempts from the 3-point line, but the trio got right against the Jayhawks.
All three finished the game in double figures led Janning’s 15 points. Faber followed with 13 and McGrory added 11 (all in the first half) as the Bluejays moved to 3-3 on the season with a 69-49 win in front of a crowd of just over 1,000 fans at D.J. Sokol Arena.
Janning and Faber acknowledged that it was hard to ignore the poor shooting number from the past five games. The challenge was not letting it carry over.
“We can’t stop shooting,” Janning said. “We have to stay confident in ourselves. I think we did a good job of telling each other that.”
The fifth-year senior added that the key to successful navigation through a shooting slump is by impacting the game in other ways.
“Audrey can make up for it with rebounding, and I can make up for it by setting up my teammates and getting them open shots,” she said. “We just have to keep playing and affect the game in other areas if we aren’t shooting well.”
Focusing on other facets of the game helped to keep the duo engaged while they waited for the shots to start falling.
“It’s about getting other people involved to keep myself mentally in the game,” Faber said. “Finding other people on cuts, finding Bri inside, whatever I can do to stay locked into the game.
“It’s obviously really frustrating, but you just try to look forward to that one day when it’s all going to click. All my coaches and my teammates tell me to keep shooting, so that’s the mindset I have.”
The trio didn’t have to wait too long on Wednesday to see the ball go through the hoop. They scored 17 of their team’s points in the first ten minutes and combined to hit 7-of-8 shots from the field to help the Bluejays take a 19-10 lead into the second quarter of action.
Creighton’s offense stagnated in the final ten minutes as they hit only four of their 16 shots to end the first half, but they went into the locker room with a 30-22 lead anyway as Kansas was only 5-of-16 in the second quarter. McGrory’s 11 points and three rebounds led the way for the Bluejays in the first half.
MC McGrory contributed to the Bluejays win on Wednesday night. (Spomer / WBR)
Kansas opened the third quarter on a 7-2 run to cut Creighton’s lead to a single possession at 32-29, but Janning hit a pair of pull-up jumpers from the left side of the floor and senior center Brianna Rollerson converted a traditional 3-point play to stretch out the lead. After the Jayhawks cut it to a four-point game with 2:23 left in the period, Janning and Faber scored Creighton’s final nine points to give them a 48-39 lead going into the fourth quarter. By the end of the third that duo was 12-of-16 from the field and also had five of the team’s 11 assists.
“I really liked the fact that Marissa used her mid-range game. That was effective,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “She’s kind of gone too much, in my opinion, to shooting floaters and runners — which I don’t mind her shooting one of those a game, but I feel like now that she’s put the ball on the floor she’s been a little too willing to shoot that instead of a pull-up. I liked the fact that she chose the pull-up versus the runner tonight. She’s probably a better 3-point shooter than she is a mid-range shooter, but she’s still got a pretty good mid-range game.”
Late in the third quarter and into the fourth the Bluejays started taking advantage of an over-aggressive Kansas defense on the perimeter by running the offense through their five player in the low post, specifically Rollerson. The adjustment usually resulted in a layup, or a ball reversal into a swing pass for a wide open shot on the wing. It allowed Creighton to string together a 25-9 run for a ten-minute stretch from the end of the third quarter to the final few minutes of the fourth to put the game out of reach.
Rollerson went 4-of-6 from the field in 25 minutes, and finished her night with 10 points, five rebounds, four blocked shots, and three assists as a result of the offense funneling through her as the second half wore on.
“Bri has a really good feel for the game,” Flanery said. “She is a good passer, she’s got good hands, and I think she’s a really good decision-maker … now that she is in better shape and more confident, she is more willing to score the ball in one-on-one situations, and she is such a good passer when people crowd or double.”
Rollerson got help from her trio of reserves — Ali Greene, Bailey Norby, and Kylie Brown — at her position as well. All together, the quartet combined for 23 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, and five blocked shots on 9-of-12 shooting over the course of their 40 minutes on the court.
“I thought all of our fives played well,” Flanery said. “Ali and Bailey, and then even Kylie at the end. What they all did was really a big key to our success.”
Creighton will get some much-needed rest playing three games in six days and traveling back from the Bahamas to Omaha in that time. They’ll return to the court next Wednesday, December 7th for a home game that is scheduled for a 12:00 p.m. tip-off against crosstown rival Nebraska-Omaha.
