Bluejay Beat Podcast:
On the final play of the first half Monday night, Antwann Jones threw a behind-the-back pass to Mitch Ballock, who drained a 3-pointer in front of Marquette’s bench. It was Ballock’s fifth 3-pointer of the half, the Jays’ sharpshooter was hot for the first time all season, and they led by nine.
Combined with pretty good defense and effort on the glass, the Jays seemed well on their way to a win in the Big East opener.
All of which makes what happened in the next 20 minutes even more unfathomable. The Jays surrendered 54 points in the second half. They allowed Marquette to make 7-of-9 from three-point range, and to grab an offensive rebound on 10 of their 14 missed shots. CU missed 11 free throws, all of them in the game’s final 10 minutes. The Golden Eagles came into the game hitting 35.1% from three-point range, and suddenly couldn’t miss. Their assist-to-turnover ratio was poor, under 1.0 entering Monday night. In the second half it was a staggering 1.58.
Individually, the numbers were just as bad. Greg Elliot had been 3-of-9 from three-point range. He made all four 3’s that he took, a couple of them while flopping wildly in the air — enough so to draw two flop warnings and a technical foul. D.J. Carton had been 6-of-25 from three-point range coming in. He made 5-of-7 in the best performance of his Marquette career.
“If you want to sum up the game, the first play of the second half is the only one you need to watch,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We had guys on their tip-toes instead of in the fight going for the rebound.”
It was indicative of a massive shift in both momentum and energy level. Two missed shots at the rim, two offensive rebounds, and an open three for Carton. Instead of the Jays potentially pushing the lead into double digits early in the half to build on Ballock’s clutch shot at the buzzer, Marquette cut it to six. A minute later, they fouled Carton shooting a three, and he made all three free throws.
“And then we were in a war,” McDermott noted.
By the 12:58 mark, Marquette had surged ahead 58-56. They led the rest of the night, by as many as 12, and withstood a couple of late Bluejay runs to earn the win.
“We’ve gotta be better defensively than we were tonight,” McDermott said. “We scored 84 points on 67 possessions. That’s plenty of offense. Not to mention that we left 11 free throws out there.”
Indeed, offensively the Jays put together one of — if not their best — games of the year so far. Ballock made 8 threes for a season-best 26 points. Denzel Mahoney made 4-of-8 from three-point range and added 21 points. Damien Jefferson scored from everywhere, with 17 points. And so despite Marcus Zegarowski going 0-for-7 on threes and 4-of-13 overall, the Jays scored more than enough to win in spite of going an unacceptable 14-of-25 from the line.
“I was a little hard on the guys after the game. I didn’t think the effort and the fight was there tonight,” McDermott added. “The reality is, if I had a bunch of freshmen and sophomores in that locker room, I could light ’em up tomorrow in practice. We could spend a couple of hours on effort and I could fix it by driving them into the ground. But I’ve got grown men in that locker room. I’ve got guys that have been around it, they’ve been through it, they understand what it takes to win a game like this, and tonight we didn’t execute what it takes.”
That sounds like a coach who’s more disappointed than mad, and with good reason. Sure, Ty-Shon Alexander — their best on-ball defender and under-appreciated rebounder — is gone to the NBA. But the rest of the roster is comprised mostly of veterans who played big roles on a team that won a Big East title thanks in part to a high-energy, tenacious style and by outworking opponents — or matching their effort — almost every game. Those traits were invisible in the second half.
If that’s a blip, Creighton will be fine. They had several games in last year’s championship run that feel similar — the blowout loss to San Diego State in Las Vegas, the blowout loss at Providence, decisive losses at St. John’s and Butler, and the late-game failures in a loss at Georgetown all come to mind. They bounced back from each one. But if the second half is a trend…
Key Stats:
Creighton misses 11 free throws in the game’s final 10 minutes, marking the second time in six games where missed free throws are the most glaring negative on the stat sheet. They were just 9-of-18 in the one-point loss at Kansas a week ago.
