On Tuesday night, the Creighton men’s basketball team took on Northern Iowa. If I were either Greg McDermott or Ben Jacobson, I would feel just a bit awkward. It is well documented that they are the best of friends as Jacobson was an assistant with McDermott when he was the head coach at Northern Iowa and so many other connections. However, on the basketball court I have always wondered if in the back of Jacobson’s mind, he wishes they weren’t so close of friends.
Jacobson didn't like some calls Tuesday night (WBR)
Doug McDermott originally signed with Northern Iowa, but then was let out of his Letter of Intent when Greg was hired at Creighton and Doug followed. That takes a lot of guts to willing allow a player to not only leave your team, but to go to a team within the conference that you will see for the next four seasons. That says a lot about Ben Jacobson. Creighton fans should tell him thank you every day.
Nobody knew that Doug would go on to have a great freshman season and even a better season as a sophomore. But for Jacobson and the Panthers on Tuesday night, their plan was to completely take Doug out of the equation and challenge the Bluejays to beat them with everyone else. That’s exactly what happened as the Bluejays won 63-60.
Every time McDermott would get the ball, Northern Iowa would double team him. The Panthers would play off the perimeter players like Grant Gibbs and Antoine Young to help guard McDermott. They bumped McDermott, they pushed him out of the block. It was almost as if Jacobson had this sinister plan for the Panthers to play as physical as possible. And it worked for the most part. McDermott was held to 14 points, 11 points off of his average. He really had to work for those points.
Creighton was down 10 points early after a hot shooting Marc Sonnen who was 5-of-5 from three within the first 10 minutes of the game, or so it seemed. But the Bluejays rallied back with some great minutes and points from Josh Jones and Ethan Wragge off the bench. They were only down 32-31 at the half. As physical of a game as it was, there was only 6 fouls called in the first half.
In the second half, since Doug McDermott was being taken out of the game, the Bluejays were able to take the lead by getting the ball down low to Gregory Echenique who was fouled on three consecutive possessions. As the second half went on, Echenique came up with some big rebounds.
Antoine Young and the other Bluejays kept UNI honest (WBR)
Then there was the play of Antoine Young. With Northern Iowa challenging him to make a difference, he absolutely did that by scoring 13 of his team high 21 points in the second half. None bigger than the off the dribble three pointer with about two minutes remaining to put the Bluejays up by five.
Gibbs also made the Panthers pay for playing off of him scoring all 10 of his points in the second half including a couple big baskets down the stretch. A friend of mine told me the other day that Creighton needed to post up Gibbs a little more. He got his wish late in the game where Gibbs posted up and took on his defender for an easy bucket. Then he hit two big free throws with 15 seconds to go to give the Bluejays their final margin of victory.
Tuesday night was proof that as much as you try to take Doug McDermott out of the game, the Bluejays have plenty of weapons to make the opponent pay for that option. The contributions of his teammates and the desire for them to win shows how cohesive this team is this season. Creighton fans are on cloud nine right now, and they should be.
Ben Jacobson, thank you for helping this team, not only for bringing Doug McDermott to Creighton but for also showing how far this team has come in the two seasons with Greg McDermott as coach.
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See a photo gallery from Tuesday night’s game from WBR photographers Adam Streur and Mike Spomer.