[dropcap]With[/dropcap] only two games over the last 10 days, Jim Flanery and his coaching staff had a lot of time to figure out who could step up and the go-to player while three-time all-conference guard Marissa Janning is recovering from a broken fibula. The answer has turned out to be Audrey Faber. Though only a freshman, the 6-foot-2 versatile forward has led the team in scoring the entire season while also shooting a robust percentage from the field and from the three-point line. While the Bluejays are nursing key players back to health, Faber has been handed the reigns to not only make plays for herself, but for her teammates as well.
“We put in a little bit of structure, and I’m not fooling anybody a lot of the structure that we put in is for Audrey,” Flanery said. “Just to make a play, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be her shot. She got [Lauren Works] a three tonight off a play we ran for her. She did a good job of running some of the structure and not forcing her play, and I think that’s been key.”
It goes without saying that any star player wants the ball in their hands as much as possible, but it’s still business as usual according to the 19-year-0ld from Clive, Iowa.
“With Bri and Marissa out everyone’s role had to step up a notch,” Faber said. “If I have to make more decisions, and move the ball, and have the ball in my hands more I’m comfortable with that.
“I think my teammates and my coaches have trust in me. They’re all willing to pass me the ball and get me good shots, so I’m taking away from the team if I don’t take those shots or if I’m not attacking and being aggressive. I know I need to be aggressive to help the team on offense.”
Her skill set coming out of high school as an ESPN Top 100 recruit — she came in at No. 72 in the final rankings — was apparent from her very first workout. Her ability to score the basketball made her an impact player from the very first game. She has scored in double figures 10 of the 12 games she has played in. In her last nine games since entering the starting lineup she is averaging 16.4 points per game and her minutes have gone up as she has proven her abilities at this level.
More than just her pure scoring ability, her ability to assess a situation and either make a play for herself or defer to a teammate is evidence of a player who has a high IQ to go along with her physical abilities. On Sunday night she picked apart Nebraska-Omaha’s zone defense from the foul line area, dishing out five assists to her teammates before finding enough open spots for herself to knock down a season-high five 3-pointers. In their most recent game against Northern Iowa, she read the different ways Panthers defended her and scored inside and out depending on her match-up. Having a player like Faber, regardless of her age or experience level, that he can trust with the ball in her hands makes Jim Flanery’s job a little easier when she’s on the floor.
“She’s fun to coach, because she brings it,” Flanery said. “She brings it and she wants the ball. She’s not afraid of it. She steps up. She’s a tough match-up. When [Northern Iowa] played her with a smaller person she was good about trying to get inside and score from there, and when they played her with Sorenson — which was the principle match-up that they had on her — she just moved well without the ball, and caught the ball in a ready position.”
As much as it’s noticeable when she’s either setting up a teammate or stepping out to knock down another three-pointer, it’s even more noticeable when she’s not on the floor. In only 12 games, her importance to the Bluejay offense is as apparent now as her skills were on day one of preseason practice.
“We’re relying a lot on her. If you look at the stretch at the end of the first quarter when she came out, and there was no timeout forever, we had a hard time scoring,” Flanery noted. “Northern Iowa guards well, but without her on the floor we don’t have the kind of shot creator that we do when she’s on the floor. Without Marissa and Bri we need her to be a heavy minutes player.
“She’s put together as good of a pre-Christmas freshman year as anybody I’ve coached.”
The one thing that begins to follow talented players when they start to get a little more attention is how they respond in the game’s biggest moments. Tie game situations, late game situations, those make or break moments. Even in her short time as a Creighton Bluejay she’s already showing glimpses of being the type of player who rises to the occasion.
In just her third career game, the Bluejays played at Drake — roughly ten miles from her hometown. In front of family and friends, instead of locking up and getting overwhelmed she led the team with 19 points. In her first career start against down in Austin, Texas against an athletic East Carolina squad, she scored a career-high 25 points on 8-of-10 shooting in just 29 minutes. Down in Lincoln against in-state rival Nebraska and highly-touted freshman Jessica Sheppard, Faber dropped 22 points on 9-of-13 from the field, and added five rebounds, six assists, six blocked shots, and two steals in 35 minutes. In her most recent outing against the Panthers, she scored 15 of her game-high 22 points in the second half to help turn a one-point halftime lead into an eight-point win to pull her team’s overall record up to .500 at 6-6 heading into Big East play.
Jim Flanery admits he doesn’t know too much about that special ingredient that separates good players from great ones, but from what he has seen so far he can see it in his star freshman.
“I wish I knew what that was, because you’d like to give it to everybody,” Flanery said. “First of all, she’s competitive. The one thing coming out of the summer and the early fall that we said about her was she’s a competitor. She doesn’t like to lose, in a good way. She can get grumpy when she loses. You like players like that. She’s not afraid of the moment. I don’t know how people get that unless they put themselves in that situation, and they want to be in that situation. That’s a tough thing to teach somebody. It seems like you have it, and you can get better at, but she wants the ball when it’s crunch time.”