The Creighton men’s basketball team used a key 11-0 run midway through the second half to shake off a pesky Chicago State team and cruise to an 84-66 win in their last tune-up before No. 19 Oklahoma comes to Omaha on Wednesday.
“I’m pleased to get a win on an afternoon when we didn’t shoot the ball particularly well,” said Creighton head coach Greg McDermott. “We’re a team built on shooting, so when you don’t shoot it well it’s going to look a little rugged and ragged at times and I think that was the case today.”
Will Artino scored a career-high 20 points (WBR/Brad Williams) $ CLICK TO BUY $
Things looked good early after the Bluejays began their second game almost the same way they did in the opener, building an 8-0 lead with some aggressive attacks at the basket. The run was capped with a Rick Kreklow lob to Will Artino for a dunk to force an early timeout by Chicago State.
The Jays extended the lead to 15-3 before the Cougars woke up and made a game of things with an 11-0 run. Clarke Rosenburg, the leading returning scorer for Chicago State, keyed the run by scoring six points and converting a pair of steals into quick points to cut the Creighton lead down to 15-14 at the under-12 media timeout with 11:51 to go in the first half.
Creighton got a lift from sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden, who sparked a 12-o run in response by the Bluejays by stretching the floor with two deep 3-pointers 26 seconds apart. He hit another one a few minutes later to give Creighton a 27-14 lead with 9:23 left in the opening half.
The three-headed monster at center for the Bluejays joined the part shortly after that when Will Artino, Geoffrey Groselle, and Zach Hanson combined to score 10 straight points. After a late basket by Rosenburg cut the deficit to 15, Bluejay redshirt freshman point guard Tyler Clement quickly brought the ball up court found Creighton’s other redshirt freshman Toby Hegner just inside half court for a buzzer-beating 35-footer to send Creighton into the locker room with a 45-27 lead over Chicago State.
Hegner said he wasn’t sure of where he was on the floor, but he thought he was close enough to shoot it normally.
“I was yelling, ‘Tyler, left, left!’ and he got me the ball. I saw one second left and didn’t have time for a dribble so I just shot it. It felt really good and it went in. It was all thanks to Tyler, he was dribbling left to right, spun a little bit, chucked it right behind him, and I just had to let it fly at the moment. I had no idea where I was. I shot it normally because I felt like I was somewhat close.”
It was the first three-pointer in the Creighton career for Hegner who finished the half with nine points, six rebounds, an assists, and a blocked shot in 16 minutes of action.
The Bluejays came out flat in the second half, scoring just six points while also coughing the ball up six times in their first 14 possessions. The defensive pressure of Chicago State was part of the reason and it allowed the go on a 15-6 run and cut the deficit to 51-42 with 13:24 remaining. Coach McDermott gave credit to the Cougars where it was due, but also said his team didn’t start the half the way they should have.
“I thought we were very casual. Some of our screening activity, our cuts, our inbound passes, just we weren’t crisp,” McDermott said. “Credit to Chicago State. They came out, they were aggressive, and we weren’t. That’s troubling, but it’s also something that I think we can learn from.”
“They caught us on our heels,” said Bluejay sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden. “They came out and threw the first punch. … We came out and were throwing it around real quick because of their pressure and we just had to take our time.”
Isaiah Zierden celebrates a basket against Chicago State (WBR/Adam Streur) $ CLICK TO BUY $
Zierden, along with Artino and Hegner, helped Creighton slow things down and sparked the team to an 11-0 run. Zierden started things off with a pair of free throws to make it 53-42. Then Artino grabbed offensive rebounds on consecutive possessions, making it count on the second by drawing a foul and knocking down the free throws. He stole the ball from Chicago State guard Trayvon Palmer and scored off an assist from Hegner on the ensuing possession. Another steal by the Bluejays, this time by senior Austin Chatman, led to a corner 3-pointer for Hegner, who finished off the key stretch on possession later with a pair of free throws after he was fouled fighting for a rebound on the defensive end of the floor.
The Bluejays led 62-42 after the trio’s damage was done and Chicago State would not get any closer than 15 points and trailed by as much as 23 points as the Creighton reserves put the game away to improve to 2-0 on the season.
Coach McDermott said of the key stretch that his team is still learning how to respond to a stretch of empty possessions as they continue life without the NCAA’s fifth all-time leading scorer Doug McDermott.
“It was huge for us,” coach McDermott said of the spark Zierden, Artino, and Hegner provided. “I walk a fine line as the head coach. We’re missing open threes, and that’s what we do. You have to be careful about putting the handcuffs on guys that this is what we brought them here to do. Just because you’ve taken four quick ones and they’re open and you missed them, you don’t [players] be tentative. Having said that, last year if we didn’t score for four or five possessions we kind of knew the rank of who was going to touch the ball. If we didn’t score for four or five, Doug was going to touch it. There were a lot of times Grant Gibbs is shot-faking with nobody within ten feet of him and he’s turning down open shots, because we haven’t scored for three or four possessions. That didn’t mean Doug was going to shoot it, but we needed to get him a touch. We don’t really know what that order is on this team yet, and I’m not sure that the order won’t change from game to game.
“Tonight, Will had it going, Toby had it going. A key play in the game, Toby turned down a wide open three at the top of the key, shot-faked, and made one more pass that went in to Will for a layup. That’s just guys understanding okay where does the ball need to go now. Isaiah’s hit a couple in a row, let’s get him another one. Austin’s got it going, let’s get him some space to operate. Toby’s hit a few threes or Zach or Will have been good on the post, we need to get it back in there. That’s going to change from game to game for us with this team. It’s this group of guys getting used to who needs the ball right now, because I’ve given them the green light. We all know that. They get an open three, they’re supposed to shoot it. We have to understand situational basketball, time and score, and who needs to get the ball in certain situations, and I think we’ll get better at that.”
It was a career night for that group as Hegner finished with personal-bests 17 points and seven rebounds in his second career game. In his first game back from injury the other night against Central Arkansas, Zierden scored a career-high 16 points. Against Chicago State, he did it again with 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting, including 4-of-9 from beyond the arc.
Artino, who was coming off a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds in the opener, made the second game of his senior year one to remember with a career-high in points (20) and steals (5), while also hauling in eight rebounds in just 22 minutes on the floor. Asked after the game which new mark he was more proud of between the points and steals, Artino answered how you would expect a senior with three NCAA Tournament appearances to answer.
“I’m most happy with the win,” Artino said. “When they started making a comeback I knew that as a starter I didn’t play very well coming out of my first shift. Coach Mac put me back in and I knew it was my job to bring back some energy to this team. I was just happy that we were able to put together a little run.”
Sitting at 2-0 with wins over Central Arkansas and Chicago State, the Bluejays will now set their sights on the 19th-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, who were 78-53 winners over Southeastern Louisiana prior to the Jays tipping off against the Cougars. Zierden knows what they need to work on to be ready to take on perhaps their most difficult test of the last few seasons.
“We have to watch a lot of film, but we gotta communicate on defense,” Zierden said. “I thought it got from last game on Friday to today, and it will continue to get better as we work on it more. We just have to stay on what we do.”
McDermott said that Oklahoma will be one of the best teams Creighton has seen lately, including them among the Wichita States and Villanovas that have visited the CenturyLink Center Omaha during his time at the helm of the Bluejays.
“I think this is a team that has a chance to, if they can stay healthy, make a deep, deep run. The NCAA Tournament is all about match-ups and the Big 12 is obviously very good this year, but I think this is Coach Kruger’s best team since he’s been there. … We’re going to see in the front-line in [Thomas] and Spangler, and then their guard core, they have three guys that can score the basketball, that are solid with the basketball, and they’ll defend the heck out of you for 40 minutes. It’ll be one of the better teams that’s come to Omaha in awhile. They’re every bit as good as Villanova and some of the good Wichita State teams, and of the teams that have rolled through here the last few years this Oklahoma team is every bit as good as any of them we’ve played.
“There are a lot of things we have to learn about our team. This season is going to be a process for awhile until roles start to be more clearly defined. That’s going to happen over time I think and playing somebody that’s capable of punching you in the nose I think is healthy for us at this time of the year, so we’ll see what happens. I know our guys will prepare hard and be anxious to play the game on Wednesday night, and the reality of it is we need to rock this house like we did during the Big East season last year on Wednesday night, because we’re going to need that sixth man against a very good basketball team.”
Tip-off of the highly-anticipated match-up between the Bluejays (2-0) and No. 19 Sooners (1-0) is set for 7:01 p.m. at the CenturyLink Center Omaha. The game will be televised on Fox Sports 1.