From the time Creighton started playing men’s basketball (1916-1917) through the 1959-1960 season, the Bluejays called the Vinardi Center home. CU went 336-92 in 42 seasons in the on-campus gym, which now stands as home to the basketball practice facility.
Each week of the Creighton men’s basketball season, WBR will catch up with a Creighton coach to report about practice and the state of the program.
This week, we poke our microphone into the huddled media masses at a midweek practice.
Greg McDermott, on the win at Wichita after losing at home to Missouri State:
“Over the course of a 30-game season, you’re going to have some peaks and valleys, and you hope that when you have one of those when you aren’t on the top of your game you somehow find a way to come out on top. Unfortunately we came up a little short, but Missouri State had a lot to do with that. But our guys were refocused the next day in practice. They knew what we needed to do in order to go to Wichita with an opportunity to win.”
McDermott, on other players stepping up due to added pressure against Doug McDermott:
“We have enough talent that if people are going to do things to take Doug away, we can beat people in other ways. That’s something that the other guys have to adjust to and, frankly, that’s something that Doug has to adjust to. Sometimes he’s going to be a decoy. He’ll learn to live with that. It can be difficult, especially when you’re used to getting a lot of touches. And we still have to work to make sure we get him a lot of touches, to make sure those double teams and triple teams come, and then we need to play out of it. At Wichita our spacing was good, and we were able to get into the teeth of the defense because of the way they guarded Doug and Ethan [Wragge] in particular.”
McDermott, on the quality of the league play so far:
“There have been some big wins away from home. Missouri State comes here and wins, we go to Wichita and win, and Evansville goes to Northern Iowa and wins. There are a lot of strange things that have happened this first week, and I think we are going to see more of the same. Teams are so familiar with each other, and a lot of things can happen in conference play. I think you see it across the country; I don’t think our league is special in that regard. It is really important that we get back to protecting our home floor and hopefully continue to play with a little bit of swagger that we’ve played with away from home.”
Doug McDermott, on the team’s effort at Wichita:
“It was a good win for us. We played a really unselfish game and I think we got it done on the defensive end of the floor, which felt really good. Even though we didn’t shoot it very well, we still found a way to win on the defensive end of the floor.”
McDermott, on winning that game after losing at home to Missouri State:
“It was huge. I think we were more focused going into the Wichita State game just knowing what happened against Missouri State. I think it was a good wake up call for us; you can’t overlook teams, and we’re really comfortable playing in this building, but we know we have to bring it every night if we want to win the conference.”
