Both the Creighton men’s and women’s basketball teams had their closed scrimmage last weekend. In today’s practice report we have some insight from both head coaches, along with some other news coming out of practice.
Women’s Basketball Notes:
Jaylyn Agnew was definitely the go-to player in the Iowa scrimmage. (Juszyk / WBR)
- Fresh off their win at Iowa in a closed scrimmage on Saturday, the Bluejays went through a light team session on Monday afternoon to fine-tune some things in their half court sets.
- Against the Hawkeyes, Creighton scored 34 points in the paint and produced another 20 off turnovers. Had that happened in any game last season, it would have been tied for the third-most points in the paint and the second-most points off turnovers.
- Senior wing Jaylyn Agnew dropped 26 points and nine rebounds in Iowa City. In two preseason outings against Concordia and Iowa she filled up the stat sheet to the tune of 21.5 points, 14.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 2.5 blocks per game. She did all of that while also shooting 50.0% from the field, 47.1% from three, and 83.3% from the free-throw line.
- Sophomore Payton Brotzki followed up a 10-point, 9-rebound performance against Concordia with 18 points (on 7-of-10 shooting) and five boards off the bench on Saturday. With the Jays looking for players to step and fill the gap offensively created by the graduation of Audrey Faber, the second-year player out of Papillion has put together a pair of productive outings so far.
- For the most part, head coach Jim Flanery was pleased with the things he saw from his team on Saturday…
…on the offensive performance: “Our offense was pretty good. They are pretty vanilla defensively. I thought that helped us, but our execution was better in structure and out of structure. When we wanted to be structured, we ran our stuff better, and when we were out of structure I felt like we did a pretty good job of setting and reading screens. I think we drew five fouls on them just barrelling through screens. And when they got a bucket or two, we seemed to answer.
“I thought our point guard play was key. Tatum didn’t get in foul trouble, and she and Dee Dee were solid. That’s going to be big, because I feel like we have enough other kids who can score the ball. If we can get that kind of point guard, that will be big.”
…on the defensive side of the ball: “I was less thrilled, especially after watching it. We gave up several easy transition opportunities where we just didn’t talk and didn’t show the urgency to match up. Some of that is coaching. We’ve got to simplify what we want them to do. That was good from the standpoint that it exposed some things that we maybe haven’t talked as much about as we need to.”
…on his overall assessment of the preseason: “The value of the two opportunities we had was great because they were different, and they exposed some different things. Defensively we were better in the first game than we were offensively for sure, and then vice versa on Saturday. Hopefully it’s enough to learn from.”
Men’s Basketball Notes:
Davion Mintz will be out with injury to start the season (Juszyk / WBR)
- Some injury news of note for the Jays, both good and bad. The good: junior forward Damien Jefferson returned to practice on Monday after missing some time with a lower leg injury that he sustained toward the end of practice last week. The bad: senior guard Davion Mintz will be in a hard cast until November 6th while he heals up from a high ankle sprain. Once the cast is removed his timetable for a return ranges from anywhere in the 2-3 week range, best-case, and the 5-6 week range, worst-case.
- Under Cuonzo Martin, Missouri prefers to keep a lid on any specifics from closed scrimmages, but Creighton head coach Greg McDermott was able to offer his assessment of a few areas from Saturday’s road trip…
Shereef Mitchell may get a big opportunity for more minutes to start the season (Juszyk / WBR)
…on how things went offensively: “We shared the basketball, which is something that always has to be a priority for us. I thought our shot quality and shot selection was really good. We didn’t shoot it particularly well, but we also didn’t let that impact other areas of the game. Give or take a possession or two it was around an 80-possession game and I think we turned it over 12 or 13 times, and a lot of those were in the first half — their physicality and length got to us a little bit early and then we adjusted to that.”
…on what he saw from the Jays defensively: “I thought our guys really competed. There were times when we had Shereef, Marcus, and Jett out there together. We were short-handed … but the guys that played did a good job of establishing our pace and competing even though we were really short on numbers.”
…on what surprised him in a good way: “It’s hard for us, especially right now, to simulate the length in practice that we’ll play against, so how we adjusted to that — [Jeremiah] Tilmon is a talented front line player, so I was wondering how we would handle him. He got off to a good start, but I thought as the game went on we did a good job slowing him down. We battled on the backboards, we got some second opportunities on the offensive glass, and for the most part we fought really hard on the defensive glass.”
…on what he’s concerned about going forward: “Christian and Kelvin are fouling too much. That has to be something that we clean up. We’re not in a position, especially for the next month or six weeks where we can afford to have anybody in foul trouble, let alone those two guys. They have to be a little smarter on a few plays, and be a little more fundamentally sound on some others where they are getting caught out of position and that’s leading to the foul. Christian fought some foul trouble over in Australia as well, so he has to clean that up.”
