Marissa Janning is taking on a new role on the women’s basketball team (Spomer/WBR)
Creighton head coach Jim Flanery is not stranger to making adjustments. Lineup changes, position switches, offensive and defensive strategies, Flanery will tinker with it all throughout the season until it stops working and its time to make the next change.
One of his latest changes was moving his All-Big East shooting guard Marissa Janning back into the point guard spot she played when she won Freshman of the Year in Creighton’s final year as a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. Flanery made the switch prior to the DePaul game, which didn’t go so well for anyone on the team. However, in the next game at Marquette, Janning scored 27 points, her second-highest point total of the season, and dished out five assists while orchestrating a 59-point second half in the 93-75 road win.
Though she didn’t score as much against Xavier, she might have played a better game. The junior guard, and reigning Big East Player of the Year, scored 17 points on 5-of-10 shooting to go along with six assists, four steals, and just one turnover in the 74-65 Creighton win, including several nifty passes on the run to Brianna Rollerson, Sydney Lamberty, and a big one in transition to Lauren Works that resulted in a 3-point play to put the Bluejays ahead 64-60 late in the game. The play kicked off a 9-0 run that ended with Janning finding Lamberty in the right corner for an 18-footer that made it 70-60 and put the game out of reach.
“I thought her decision-making tonight was really good,” Flanery said after the Xavier game. “I thought she didn’t predetermine what she was going to do when she drove it. Sometimes, not just Marissa, kids will drive it to pass it or drive it to score it. I thought she was pretty good about reading the defense. She kicked it when she should have kicked it and she shot it when she should have shot it. You’re not going to be 100% on those reads, but I thought she was really good there.”
Through the three games at point guard, Janning is averaging 19.7 points, 4.3 assists, 1.3 steals, and shooting 44.9% from the field. All are improvements over her current season averages in those categories. She is also averaging 2.3 turnovers per game as the team’s primary ball-handler, which is lower than her season average was prior to switching positions.
For what it’s worth, Janning doesn’t mind playing off the ball as opposed to the point guard, but she sees the difference and benefits to playing the point. “I played there all freshman year. I think it just works with our personnel,” said Janning. “Last year it didn’t because you had McKenzie Fujan and Sarah [Nelson] and me, and you kind of wanted to get into the offense right away. I think it opens things up, because I like to make plays for people. I like to find the open person in the corner, on the wing. I like it, I’m really comfortable there.”
Flanery credits Janning for being open to the change. It’s not always as easy to get players to buy in to a change like that, especially switching from a position where they won the player of the year award in a top flight conference. “I credit her for accepting it and being willing to make that change midway through her junior year,” Flanery said. “We just feel like we’ve seen enough teams that have pressed in the league. MC [McGrory] is not necessarily a point guard. We’ve played her there in some ways to help Marissa be more of a scorer, and we’ve seen enough pressure to where — it’s not MC’s fault, but from a quickness standpoint she’s going to labor in the back court against teams that press more than Marissa is because of Marissa’s quickness. Half the league presses and that’s part of why we did it.
“The other part is we wanted to jump start Marissa, because I feel like she can play at the level that she’s played at the last two games and that makes us quite a bit better than some games earlier where she was struggling a little.”
Flanery hoping for young center’s defense to catch up to her offense
Brianna Rollerson is making an impact (Spomer/WBR)
Redshirt sophomore center Brianna Rollerson’s career-high 22 points and 10 rebounds may have jumped off the stat sheet, but to Jim Flanery it was her impact defensively in key moments in the win over Xavier that made a bigger difference.
“She’s the kid that everybody wonders why I don’t play more, and a lot of it is because she needs to guard better, and talk better on defense, and block out.” said Flanery. “She always has a lot of offensive rebounds, but defensive rebounds sometime she doesn’t have as many because she won’t block out as much as we need her to. I thought she really did a nice job there against Xavier. The blocks and the two steals, the one where she played around in the post and we need her to do that.”
There have been three games this season where the Omaha Central product’s all-around impact has not only been obvious in the stat sheet, but also resulted in win for the Bluejays. In the games against Kansas, Georgetown, and Xavier — games in which Creighton is 3-0 — Rollerson is average 17.3 points, 12.3 rebounds, 2.7 blocks, and 1.0 steals per game while shooting 58.8% from the field and 80% from the free throw line.
Take those gaudy numbers and compare them to her numbers from the other 18 games, where Creighton is below .500 at 8-10. She is averaging 6.4 points, 5.2 rebounds, 0.8 blocks, and 0.2 steals per game while shooting 52.1% from the field and 64.3% from the charity stripe.
That’s a stark contrast in production. One Flanery hopes might be the kind of evidence his young center needs to motivate her to be more consistent on both ends of the floor. “I’m not saying she’s going to be defensive player of the year, but if she will commit to being a better defensive player then I won’t get frustrated and take her off the floor,” said Flanery.
“You see we need her on offense, but she’s not going to be able to score the ball maybe this well every night against bigger teams. From that standpoint that’s why we need her to be better defensively. Xavier’s kids are about the same size. When we play teams that she’s not going to be as effective scoring the ball we need her to be better in those other areas, and that’s blocking out, making sure she runs the floor, bending her knees on defense as Coach Altman would say.”
If she needed any further of how she impact that game defensively, she can look no further than Creighton’s record throughout her career when she blocks two or more shots in a game. She has done so 15 times in her almost two years on the court and in those games Creighton is 13-2 all-time with only losses coming at Kansas and at 18th-ranked Oklahoma. The Bluejays have won 12 straight games where she blocks at least two shots, including 9-0 all-time in Big East play.
Lamberty playing through the pain
Sydney Lamberty has taken on a bigger role already as a freshman (Spomer/WBR)
After struggling throughout the month of January, four-time Big East Freshman of the Week winner Sydney Lamberty got a good game under her belt against the Musketeers. The freshman guard out of Park High School in Minnesota scored 12 points on 5-for-11 shooting to go along with four rebounds, two assists, and no turnovers.
It was a good bounce back effort especially considering that she missed Tuesday’s practice to rest her achy right knee. “I’m surprised she only had two assists, because I thought she made some good passes,” said Flanery. “I thought she played under control and for the most part I thought her threes looked pretty good. I’m happy for her, because she’s struggled a little bit through January.”
As to the extent of her injury, it appears to be something the coaching staff will have to manage by giving her a day off from practice every now and then to keep her fresh and effective for the second half of the season.
“Her knee is bothering her to the point where we’re going to have to manage it the rest of the year,” Flanery said. “Maybe one extra day a week off. When we play on Friday-Sunday we always Monday off, and this past week we gave her Tuesday off and depending on Sunday’s game we’ll maybe give her a second day off again this week.”
Creighton (11-10, 4-6 Big East) returns to the floor for a 1:05 p.m. game against Butler on Sunday at D.J. Sokol Arena. The Bulldogs are 8-2 in conference play and finished the month of January a perfect 8-0, including a 63-58 home win over the Bluejays back on January 4th.