[dropcap]Upper[/dropcap] Iowa senior guard Jernell Hughes missed nine shots in 19 minutes of action. Creighton, as a team, only missed 11 over the final 20 minutes. The Bluejays finished with five players in double figures, and six more finished with at least six points as a balanced and efficient offensive effort allowed Creighton to race away from the Peacocks, 113-77, in the team’s lone exhibition game of the season on Friday night at the CenturyLink Center.
As a team, Creighton shot 58.8% from the field, 52% from behind the three-point line, and made 20-of-29 at the free throw line. Their largest lead was 38 points, and they played from in front for all but 53 seconds of game time.
“I think we have a chance to be a very balanced team; this is really two games in a row with the Missouri scrimmage where we’ve had five guys in double figures, another guy with nine, and another guy with eight,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “That was exactly how it went down at Missouri, and we had a couple guys with seven, too. I think we have a lot of people that can score the basketball in different ways, and obviously our ability to shoot the 3-point shot is going to be a big part of who we are.”
The three-ball being a big part of Creighton’s arsenal has a lot to do with the return of sharpshooting junior guard Isaiah Zierden. The long range specialist made his return to game action after a knee injury cut his season short last year. He hit 3-of-8 from beyond the arc, and 4-of-11 from the field overall, to finish with 11 points in 21 minutes. All three of his trifectas came during a key 20-6 run late in the first half that helped the Bluejays turn a 28-25 lead into a 48-31 advantage with 1:28 left in the first half.
Isaiah Zierden had three 3-pointers in his return to action Friday night. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)
“I wasn’t extremely happy with how I shot it,” Zierden said. “But there were a lot of emotions going through my mind and my body just being back for the first time in nine months, but I wasn’t going to be shy with the ball and shooting. I figured that’s what I was going to do tonight.”
Despite entering the game with 60 career 3-pointers as a Bluejay, when he saw the first one go in on Friday, and heard the roar of the crowd, it left him stunned for a moment.
“I don’t even know how to explain the emotion that went through it after watching it going in. It almost shocked me. It just kind of made me freeze for a minute, and say, ‘ok, got it out of the way, now we’re back.'”
Each one of Zierden’s 3-pointers was assisted by junior point guard Maurice Watson Jr. The transfer from Boston University made his eagerly anticipated Creighton debut after sitting out last season due to the NCAA’s transfer rules. The 5-foot-10 floor general shined in front of the 15,015 fans in attendance, scoring a team-high 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting to go along with six assists and three steals in a game-high 24 minutes.
“I’m definitely excited to get this out of the way,” Watson said. “I definitely thought the scrimmage and the Italy trip helped me a lot, but the big thing for me was I’ve never played in front of this many fans before, so I was excited about that. This is living out the dream right here playing in front of all these fans, and playing for a great team and a great coaching staff.”
Watson was also key during that late run in the first half. Along with providing the three helpers on Zierden’s 3-pointers, he also scored six points of his own, which made him in some way responsible for 15 of the 20 points that helped Creighton build the 52-37 lead that they took into the locker room at halftime.
Despite shooting 48.4% from the field for the game, Upper Iowa only hit on four of their 20 attempts from the beyond the arc, and never got any closer than 15 points in the second half. The Bluejays used a 16-5 run to build a 93-65 lead with 6:35 to go, then, even with the starters relaxing on the bench, they put together a 17-5 run to finish off their 36-point victory.
Along with Watson and Zierden, sophomore forward Toby Hegner had 13 points, junior point guard Malik Albert had 12, and true freshman Khyri Thomas had 10 to round out the five Bluejays in double figures.
Zach Hanson throws down a dunk after a lob pass from Khyri Thomas. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)
One noticeable difference on the offensive end from last season, aside from the great shooting and 113 points, was the pace the Bluejays played with throughout the game. Creighton finished with 25 fast break points on Friday. Over the last eight games of the 2014-15 season, they only had 26. Obviously the new 30-second shot clock played a factor in that, but 13 assists and only four turnovers by Watson and reserve point guards Tyler Clement and Malik Albert, plus the hot shooting allowed the Bluejays to speed things up and do so with confidence.
“The biggest emphasis in our offense right now is to run,” Watson said. “On makes and misses, especially with the new rules allowing me to be able to get into the paint, guys can’t really play as physical, so I get deeper than I expect sometimes, and guys are giving up help. It’s about getting it up quick. We have so many shooters that it’s not like we have to give up a shot for a guy. The first guy on our team to get an open look, it’s going up. That’s just a way we can make the game fast and entertaining. That’s just the way we play. Credit to all of our guys on the team who can do certain things.
“With these new rules we want to definitely push it, try to get into the paint a lot, and just try to put as much pressure on the defense as we can. It won’t really be as effective in the first half, but when they get tired we don’t get tired. That’s where we’re going to separate ourselves from a lot of teams in this league.”
James Milliken rises up to block a shot. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)
Setting aside all of the good things they did offensively, the Bluejays also acknowledged after the game some of the things that they need to clean up in other areas. The first being rebounding. Creighton trailed on the glass for the better part of the contest before rallying to pull out a 34-33 edge on the boards. Hegner, who pulled down three rebounds in 18 minutes, said the Bluejays have a lot of ground to make up in that regard before Big East play begins.
“Where we struggled was rebounding, obviously,” he said. “That’s going to hurt us. We can’t do that being in the Big East. We can’t have a night like that.”
McDermott said that a review of the game film will show if there were some technical flaws that contributed to the rebounding issues or if his team was just a victim of the bounces not going Creighton’s way.
“It was better in the second half,” McDermott said of the battle on the boards. “In the first half it seemed like every one of those little bounces around the rim and off guys’ feet ended up in their hands, but I’ve got to watch the film to see what the physicality of our block outs were. Then we have to try to correct that. We’re not blessed with a bunch of guys that are going to the top of the square to get the rebound, so technique-wise we have to be pretty solid. I think that’s an area that after this game I think guys will listen a little closer maybe in that area, because we did do a good job against Missouri rebounding the basketball.”
Along with rebounding, Creighton will also get back to trying to figure who they are and how they can be most effective on the defensive end of the floor. Despite devoting most of the preseason to defense, McDermott admits that the Bluejays are still experimenting with ways they can gets stops without fouling given the constant tinkering that has been done in regards to the way teams can guard the opposition.
“We’ve got to be able to trade blows defensively until we can throw a rainmaker at them offensively,” McDermott said. “That’s who we’re going to be. We don’t have great shot blocking. We’ve got more length than we’ve ever had, but compared to who we’re going to play in the Big East our length is probably still towards the bottom, so we have to get better at our technique and our positioning has to improve. I think right now it’s about these guys trying to figure out what can I do and what can’t I do defensively? You want to be physical, you want to be aggressive, yet you don’t want to foul. Those don’t really go together, so being able to have a physicality to your defense, and have an aggressive demeanor, to do that and not foul is very difficult to do, and that’s what we’re trying to learn.
“I think we’ll get better as time goes on, and I think certain combinations are going to be better than other combinations, and that’s what we’re sorting out as a coaching staff right now.”
Creighton will take Saturday off to recover, then get back to work on Sunday as they prepare for their 2015-16 regular season opener on Saturday, November 14 against Texas Southern. Tip-off is set for 8:30 p.m. at the CenturyLink Center and the game will be televised on Fox Sports 2.