McKenzie Fujan will be asked to add even more scoring punch during Creighton’s 2013-14 season, the team’s first in the Big East (WBR/Spomer)
With two of her highest scoring games ever as a Creighton Bluejay coming in the team’s final three games last season, Creighton women’s basketball guard McKenzie Fujan enters her senior year with a lot of confidence.
Fujan, a 5-foot-11 combo guard out of Weston, Neb., torched Illinois State for 22 points in a 64-61 overtime loss in the MVC Tournament Semifinals. Sixteen of those 22 points came in the second half to help Creighton erase an 11-point halftime deficit. Though the loss seemed devastating at the time, Fujan and the Jays were given new life thanks to an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament where they would take on Syracuse. In that game, this time with a nationally-televised audience watching her, Fujan picked up right where she left off against the ISU, repeatedly making the Orange pay for staying in a 2-3 zone en route to a career-high 24 points on 6-for-10 shooting from beyond the arc. This time her efforts led to a 61-56 Creighton win.
Although the Jays would eventually be eliminated by perennial power Tennessee in the following game, the late season performances showed fans, teammates, coaches, and most importantly, herself, what Fujan was capable of doing.
“If you look at the last few weeks of the regular season she was probably our best offensive player,” said Creighton head coach Jim Flanery. “And that’s no disrespect to Sarah (Nelson) or Marissa (Janning), but she has that capability.”
The combination of size and strength gives Fujan the physical attributes she needs to be able to take over a game as she showed last season. Combining those attributes with her abilities on the floor is what makes her a dangerous prospect for a Creighton team that enters uncharted territory with the Big East Conference waiting in 2013-2014. Last season, before the Creighton coaching staff knew for certain what they had in true freshman Marissa Janning they deployed Fujan at the point guard position. While her ball-handling allows her to be a suitable option at that position her ability to score the basketball and create shots for herself makes her more of an ideal off guard according to Flanery.
“She’s got a mid-range game, which a lot of guards don’t. She shot 44% from the three-point line, she can finish at the rim, and she’s a good in-between player,” he said. “We’re probably going to play her less at point guard and more off the ball in part because we think she is that good of a scorer.”
It wasn’t always as obvious of a decision as it appears now, however. Due to a couple injuries she sustained prior to last season, her conditioning wasn’t where she nor her coaches wanted it to be. As a result she got off to a slow start which led to some inconsistent performances. She would score 11 one game, then two the next. Another 11-point performance against Kansas was followed up three days later with a scoreless outing against BYU. It was frustrating stretch for Fujan to look back on.
“I had some bulging discs in my back and it made me sit out for a few weeks. I didn’t really start running until the first or second week of preseason workouts and it was just harder to get back into it,” she recalled. “I remember being really sore at the beginning just because I hadn’t been doing that level of activity. It was just tough to get back into. The way we run our motion is kind of just always moving, always running, and if you’re not in shape and can’t keep up with that it’s just hard to play and hard to be at your best.”
Despite being behind with her conditioning, Fujan eventually started to catch up and show glimpses of being a key scorer for an experienced Creighton squad. In early December she scored 13 points in a win over No. 25 Nebraska and three days later followed it up with a career-high 20 points in a road win against Houston. While those performances may have showed that she was starting to get where she needed it to be, physically, she didn’t feel quite fully ready to perform until the middle of conference play a month later.
“I was definitely in shape, but it just takes more than that to get in the groove of everything with everyone else too,” she said. “I think we all started to fall into place a little bit more by then.”
Down the stretch of conference play her performances were crucial to Creighton’s run to their first shared Missouri Valley regular season conference title since 2002-2003. Over the final ten games of the season she averaged better than 11 points per game as Creighton finished 8-2 over that span. That stretch of performances, some against top competition in win-or-go home situations, increased Fujan’s confidence heading into the offseason.
“In our postseason meetings she said she wanted to work on being an even better scorer,” Flanery said. “That’s hard to sit in front of your coaches and say that because you’re supposed to talk about wanting to become a better defensive player, but I think that’s good. It shows her confidence.”
In games against teams like Nebraska, Tennessee, or this season when they take on the challenges of the Big East it’s that belief along with her experience that she is going to rely on to be the player she thinks she’s capable of being when the stakes are raised.
“It’s a different game at this level,” she says. “It’s not just about age, it’s about confidence. You have to continue to get used to it, and continue to grow…”
She couldn’t quite finish the thought before the excitement took over. Along with the increased confidence she’s also far ahead of where she was physically at this point last season. According to her the season can’t begin soon enough.