No one on the Creighton men’s basketball team was afraid to admit that this was not their sharpest performance, but with the big games ahead on the schedule they didn’t fall victim to the proverbial trap game. They fought off a much improved Tulsa Golden Hurricane basketball team, 82-72, on Saturday afternoon at CenturyLink Center Omaha in front of 18,078 Bluejay fans.
Behind a big first half performance from Austin Chatman, the Bluejays took a one-point lead over Tulsa heading into the break. Creighton’s junior point guard made play after play early. First, it came with passing as he fed his post players Doug McDermott and Will Artino down low. Then after intercepting an outlet pass he raced down and found McDermott for an alley-oop to give the Jays an early 6-2 lead over the Golden Hurricane.
After falling behind 17-8 with 10:54 left in the opening half Tulsa went on a 16-7 run to tie the game at 24-all with 6:33 to go. The Golden Hurricane found success playing off their dribble penetration, getting to the rim and either drawing fouls or finding open perimeter players after the defense collapsed on the penetration. Three straight layups gave Tulsa a 39-36 lead with 1:47 remaining in the half.
Chatman answered with a three-pointer eight seconds later to tie the game, then with the Jays again down 41-39, it was Chatman again connecting from beyond the arc with .7 left to give Creighton a 42-41 advantage after 20 minutes. Although he committed his first turnover of the season in the period, he finished with 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting (3-for-3 from three-point territory), while also adding four assists and three rebounds.
“We knew he was a capable shooter,” said Tulsa head coach Danny Manning, “but when you game plan you have to take something away and you have to give something up. He walked into a couple shots and knocked them down. The one at the end of the half was on me because I said we wanted to play a little bit softer and he launched one kind of deep and it went in.”
In the second half Tulsa and Creighton traded baskets in the first couple of possessions, then Chatman knocked down a three-pointer followed up by two more from beyond the arc by McDermott and in the blink of an eye Creighton had extended a one-point lead to 55-45 with 17:26 to play in the second half.
“They came out and made some plays right off the bat and kind of staggered us some,” said Manning. “By the time we recovered they’d created some separation.”
That initial separation held for the Jays until Tulsa cut the deficit to 73-68 on a layup by Rashad Smith, who led the Golden Hurricane with 21 points, with 3:51 to play. Creighton’s dynamic duo came through with the answer to the Tulsa run as Chatman found McDermott on the wing for a three-pointer to extend the lead back to eight with 2:10 to play. Tulsa cut it down to a two-possession game less than a minute later, but the two Creighton stars finished the game off at the free throw line. For the game, Chatman finished with a career-high 19 points (7-9 FG, 4-5 3FG) to go along with nine assists and four rebounds. McDermott closed with 33 points (21 in the second half) on 9-of-17 shooting. The tw0-time All-American also pulled down a season-high 15 rebounds in the win. Both players impressed Tulsa’s head coach, a former standout on the hardwood himself.
“He’s a talented player,” Manning said in regards to Chatman, “He’s the engine that makes this team go in terms of pushing the ball in transition and distributing the ball.”
As for McDermott, the former national champion player at Kansas thinks Creighton’s all-time leading scorer has a bright future beyond his days at the CenturyLink Center:
“I’ve watched Doug play for years. I recruited one of his high school teammates at Ames High, so I’ve watched Doug for a long time,” said Manning. “He is a fun player to watch. I really appreciate his style of play. He’s always in motion, he’s unselfish, he plays hard, he’s skilled. He’s going to have a very, very successful career at the next level for a very long time.”
The only future anyone at Creighton cares about happens this week as they prepare for the upcoming Wooden Legacy tournament out in California beginning with their opening round opponent, Arizona State, on Thanksgiving night. The Jays beat the Sun Devils 87-73 last Nov. 24 to win the Las Vegas Invitational. Between now and Thursday, the Bluejays know that after struggling to stop Tulsa in transition they have some things to clean up if they are to repeat their success over ASU and their star point guard Jahii Carson.
“We have to be better in practice,” said Doug McDermott. “Tulsa’s strength is driving it and scoring in transition, and they scored a third of their points in transition tonight. A lot of it was guys were making plays, trying to take charges and certain things like that. Still, pretty unacceptable to give up 26 fast break points against a team that’s primarily a driving team.”
Creighton had a few block/charge calls go against them early in the game, and senior guard Grant Gibbs admits that it may have given them a false sense of how the officials would call those plays.
“It’s frustrating, but we had made the adjustment that you’re not going to get the benefit of the doubt on those, but they came and called a few,” Gibbs said, “the referees are calling it how they’re told to. If there is any middle ground at all it’s going to be a block, and especially in the second half we just kept trying it and it wasn’t there. We had been doing a good job of it up until this game where we really did poorly, and it’s because of the fact that we got a couple early and kind of fell back into that trap.”
The Jays will continue to work on their adjustments to the new rules and try to give their defense some “teeth” in accordance with the rules of the game. They’ll have almost a week to prepare. Tip-off for their first round game against Arizona State is set for 10 p.m. (Central Standard Time) from the Titan Gym in Fullerton, California on Thursday, Nov. 28.
See the photo gallery of the game from WBR Photographer Mike Spomer