Christian Bishop battles every game (Juszyk / WBR)
Standing 6-foot-7 and officially listed at 205 pounds, Creighton makeshift five-man Christian Bishop had his hands full on Tuesday night against an Oral Roberts front line that matched him in height and outweighed him by anywhere from 35-70 pounds. Against a trio of bruisers, the sophomore from Lee’s Summit, Missouri brought his “A game” by dropping a career-high 17 points and matching his season-high with eight rebounds — seven of which came on the offensive glass — to lead the Bluejays to a 72-60 win in front of nearly 16,500 fans at the CHI Health Center Omaha.
Bishop ended the first half with a couple of extra effort plays on the offensive glass to send CU to the locker room with a 15-point lead, then spear-headed a spurt in the second half with a pair of dunks and a nice back-door feed to point guard Marcus Zegarowski that helped push the lead to 22 with 5:44 to go before the Jays ran out of gas and allowed the Golden Eagles to trim the deficit in half down the stretch.
“When you play a defender that’s much bigger than you are you’ve gotta be smarter and quicker, and I tried to implement that into my game tonight,” Bishop said. “I think I can run faster than a lot of people, so being able to use my quickness helped me a lot tonight.”
Backup big man Kelvin Jones was headed toward a productive night of his own with four points and six rebounds in his first seven minutes of action, but he was injured when he tried to draw a charge near the baseline with 16:05 left in the second half and never returned after limping off to the locker room. That left Bishop to handle the workload for the rest of the night. He ended up logging 32 minutes and was off the court for just 39 seconds after halftime. While he was on the court the main objective to help him counter would have made Forrest Gump’s mama proud — he ran. He ran to the rim in transition, he ran out to set ball screens for his guards, he ran from baseline to baseline and around the arc, setting a relentless pace that wore into the physically imposing front court of Oral Roberts.
“When you’re sprinting every time — even if you don’t get the ball, the fact that they have to run with you, and run out and defend a ball screen and run back to the rim and run out and defend another ball screen — when they’re that size it’s hard to do,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “I thought he was active. He got behind the defense a few times and got some easy ones. He had seven offensive boards, so he was flying around when the shot went up and kept some alive besides the seven that he got.”
Kelvin Jones was on his way to a good evening before an injury early in the second half derailed that effort (Williams / WBR)
The Golden Eagles started the game by scoring on five of their first seven possessions to take a 10-8 lead with 16:10 remaining in the first half. After that the Bluejays clamped down defensively and caught fire offensively at the same time. They rattled off a 25-7 run that began and ended with a made three-pointer by junior guard Mitch Ballock, turning a two-point deficit into a 16-point advantage over the span of 10 minutes and 15 seconds. During that stretch, Creighton scored on 10 of 17 possessions, shot 9 of 14 from the field and 6 of 8 from the beyond the arc — highlighted by a 67-second stretch where junior guard Ty-Shon Alexander knocked down back-to-back-to-back transition threes in front of Oral Roberts’ bench — while simultaneously holding their opponent to 2 of 13 shooting on the defensive end.
“That’s one thing that we’ve lacked a little bit compared to other years, that spurtability where we can hit you with three, four, five [shots] in a row,” McDermott said. “It’s a little more difficult right now because we’re not getting to the free throw line a lot and we don’t get a lot of layups, so in order to put those types of runs together you have to make jump shots, and the odds will tell you that sometimes jump shots are good and sometimes you’re just not going to make them; you’re going to get good shots and miss them. Fortunately we have three elite guys at shooting jump shots, and that was the case in that first half.”
Oral Roberts found a bit of rhythm offensively late in the half, scoring five times in six-possession stretch before Christian Bishop’s two second-chance stick-backs on Creighton’s final two trips gave the Jays a 46-31 lead at the break.
The second half was a struggle for both teams as Creighton missed nine of its first 10 shots from the field, but managed to extend the lead to 20 points anyway by forcing the Golden Eagles to misfire on 15 of their first 19 field-goal attempts. The Bluejays book-ended the final 20-minutes period by missing eight of their final nine shots, but an uncontested dunk in transition by Bishop had opened up a 70-48 lead just before CU coasted to the finish line on fumes.
“It was a tale of two halves in terms of beautiful basketball,” McDermott said. “I thought in the first half the ball moved and we got pace to what we did. I thought we defended for both halves just offensively we were really stuck in the mud in the second half. I told the guys we have to be above that when we have a lead, but I also understand that it’s our fifth game in 12 days, and we’re just coming off a west coast trip where their body clocks are still a little bit out of whack — I know I’m not sleeping great at night and I’m guessing they’re the same.
“I think last Thursday and Friday took a lot out of us. You talk about an emotional roller coaster from being beat as soundly as we’ve ever been beaten and then to turn around and beat a top 12 team in the country the next night. I just think the guys were fatigued. I was really worried about this game coming off that trip. I don’t remember what year it was with Doug and Grant and those guys, but we went out to Vegas and won, then came back and got beat by Boise State at home and just had nothing in our tank. I was fearful of that again, but we found a way to get it done. That’s the most important thing.”
Three players joined Bishop in double figures to help Creighton improve its record to 6-2 on the season. Ty-Shon Alexander and Marcus Zegarowski each finished with 14 points on the night. Alexander added eight rebounds, while Zegarowski dished out a game-high six assists. Mitch Ballock rounded out the list of double-digit scorers with 12 points to go along with six rebounds, two assists, and no turnovers in 34 minutes.
The Bluejays will get off their feet on Wednesday before returning to the practice floor to begin preparing for Saturday’s game against in-state rival Nebraska, which is scheduled for a 1:30 p.m. tip-off at the CHI Health Center Omaha.