Key Stats:
Creighton held BYU’s top two shooters, Chase Fischer and Nick Emery, to a combined 9-26 from the floor and 3-13 from three-point range. Unfortunately, they allowed a more under-the-radar shooter, Zac Seljaas, to go bananas, hitting 5-6 from three-point range and leading the team with 19 points.
The Jays were even with BYU on three-point makes (8), nearly even on rebounds (losing overall 39-37 but winning 11-7 on offensive boards), and forced 13 turnovers while only giving it away nine times themselves. Unfortunately, they also missed eight free throws, and allowed BYU to shoot a scorching 12-17 (70%) on two-point shots in the second half.
It was that kind of night. Creighton did a whole lot of things well enough to win, accomplished a lot of what they wanted to, gameplan wise, but were done in by costly mistakes elsewhere…and another bad end to a half. More on that in a minute.
Standout Performances:
Mo Watson had nine points, nine assists and just two turnovers in 36 minutes of action. He shot just 3-10 from the floor, missing on several acrobatic layups he normally makes, though the combination of mountain altitude and lack of backup (Isaiah Zierden and Malik Albert were both out with injury) probably had at least something to do with that.
Geoff Groselle scored 22 points with 8 rebounds, and shot 8-10 from the field while playing defense on eggshells as he tried to figure out what was a foul and what wasn’t a foul; you’re not alone, Geoff. We don’t know either, and frankly, neither did the officials.
And Cole Huff had a double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds, though those numbers — and the outcome — might have been better had he not sat the final six minutes of the first half on the bench after picking up his second foul.
Recap & Analysis:
The first 12 minutes of Tuesday’s quarterfinal game went about as well as Creighton could have possibly imagined. BYU star Kyle Collinsworth did not start because of the flu, and was a shell of his normal self once he got into the game. Chase Fischer and Nick Emery, BYU’s top two outside shooters, were unable to even get shots off from the perimeter, much less make anything (they were a combined 1-4 from three-point range during that span). Meanwhile, Creighton was making shots inside and out, carving up BYU’s man-to-man defense with authority.
The Jays led 27-15 with 8:22 to play, and the normally rambunctious crowd at the Marriott Center was mostly quiet. Creighton had momentum, they had a double-digit lead, they were executing a well-scouted gameplan to perfection, and they’d made the home crowd a non-factor. And then, as they’ve done too many excruciating times to count, they couldn’t finish what they started.
With 6:35 to go in the half, they led 29-22, and Cole Huff picked up his second foul. He’d scored 12 of their 29 points, and was proving unstoppable; after missing his first two shots from three-point range, he’d made three of his next four, and four of five shots overall. His absence wasn’t immediately problematic, and in fact, the Bluejays increased their lead to 32-23 after two minutes of Huff being on the bench. Then the under-four timeout came, BYU switched to a zone, throwing both a 1-3-1 and a 2-3 at the Jays depending on the possession, and with no one able to bust the zone (read: Huff) the wheels came off the bus.
The Cougars ended the half on a 15-5 run, and took the lead on a thunderous dunk from Kyle Davis with 27 seconds to play. Eight of BYU’s points during the spurt came from Zac Seljaas, including a pair of three-pointers. His other two points came on free throws following a play where Groselle attempted to dribble towards the basket and was stripped of the ball; when Groselle reacted by grabbing the ball back for a tie-up, the two players fell to the court with both grasping the ball and neither touching each other. So of course, it was called a foul, Groselle’s second.
It was such an unfortunate call that ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla called the referee out by name for blowing it, and then instead of moving on, went back a couple of minutes later with his telestrator to break down exactly why it was such a bad call, and to deliver a sermon about how difficult it is for a player when a play like that is called a foul. You don’t often see a national commentator of Fraschilla’s pedigree go after an officiating crew that vehemently, a fact that was not lost on people watching from home:
And the call was no doubt the subject of a “friendly” conversation in the tunnel:
BYU smartly stuck with the zone in the second half, and Cole Huff’s return to the floor helped the Jays get better looks against it than they had with Huff on the bench. Unfortunately, his prolonged spell out of the game cooled him off, and he never found the shooting stroke he’d had early on again — he shot just 3-9 overall and 0-5 from three-point range in the second half. Meanwhile, Creighton’s defense, successful at stopping BYU from draining three-pointers, became like a leaky sieve everywhere else — the Cougars first 14 points of the half were all in the paint, with 12 of them on layups at the rim.
Groselle did plenty of damage in the paint, too, scoring eight of Creighton’s first 10 points in the second half, but just as it had in the first half, foul trouble soon removed CU’s best offensive weapon from action. He picked up his third foul with the Jays trailing 55-51; when he returned to the game, they were down 64-52, and he immediately picked up his fourth foul sending him right back to the bench. As a fan you can’t help but wonder if the call in the first half had been ruled as a jump ball instead of a foul, and as a result those two second half fouls would not have taken him out of the game for such long stretches, how the game might have unfolded differently. That’s human nature. But that’s also the way it goes sometimes, especially on the road in hostile environs, and the Bluejays had plenty of missed opportunities to make plays on their own that might have turned the game around. The game was lost not with officials’ calls, but when the Jays chose to sit their best offensive weapon with two fouls in the first half, when they let BYU’s zone defense turn the momentum of the game in their favor, and when they let BYU run a layup line during the opening minutes of the second half.
Still, this is a team that has rarely gone down without a fight, and so it was in their final game. Down 74-63 with just under three minutes to play, they made one final push, and cut the deficit to five on two occasions inside the final minute. BYU had missed four free throws over the final two minutes to help Creighton back into it, but made their final six to seal the 88-82 win.
And so a Creighton team that was coming off a 14-win season and began the year picked for ninth place in the Big East finished with 20 wins, a .500 conference record and a top-half finish in the league, and two wins in the NIT. It’s not where they hoped to be — Creighton’s goal should always be to make the NCAA Tournament — but falling short of that goal doesn’t make this season a failure. There’s positive momentum surrounding this program on the day after the season ended, and that’s a huge credit to this group for turning things around.
They ensured that last year’s losing campaign was a speed bump instead of a roadblock. They proved that Creighton can be successful without Doug McDermott, taking away something opposing coaches were using against them in recruiting. And they built a solid foundation for next year, when Marcus Foster, Justin Patton, and Damion Mintz enter the fold. CU could very well be a preseason Top 25 team this fall, and will certainly be among the top contenders in the Big East.
They Said It:
“At the end of the first half, our foul trouble hurt us. In hindsight, I probably should have went back with Cole even with his two fouls, because BYU’s zone was much more effective without him on the floor. I felt like if we could hold the lead, and I felt like we were playing well enough to at least have a five or six point lead at half, we could get away with it. But we had a couple of missed assignments on Seljaas. He hit a tough one on Ronnie, then we stepped off him on another, and then lost him in transition on one where we didn’t get matched up on him. He got three big ones, which really got them back in the game. If you’d have told me before the game that Fischer and Emery were going to go 9-26 combined, and 3-13 from three-point range, I’d say we were winning this game. But the end of the first half was obviously huge. Our movement was really stagnant against the zone, and I thought we got tired, and we didn’t have any healthy bodies over there to throw in.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“BYU’s a great team, Dave Rose has done a terrific job with them. But our guys didn’t quit, and as I told them in the locker room, I’m very proud to be back in a game that means something. Obviously we want to be back in the NCAA Tournament, but I don’t anybody gave us a chance in November to be in this situation. They fought, they clawed, and they stuck with it. Some young players got invaluable experience. Geoff and James have been terrific for our program, and Geoff in particular was huge again tonight. So I’m not going to hang my head for long. I’m disappointed, but really proud of this group and how they stuck together. We lose Z, we lose Malik, Cole’s playing on one leg, Wop is all banged up with a knee and an ankle, James’ leg is bothering him, so we’ve got all kinds of problems and yet the guys have fought through it. I’m really proud of them. Now we’ve got to get a little rest, get everybody healthy, and then we’ll get back to work.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“Going into next season, everybody has to get 10 percent better. And if everybody does that, collectively that’s going to have a huge impact on our team. That’s what I told them in the locker room. The exciting thing about the group we return is that it’s not like we feel, as a coaching staff, that anybody’s reached their ceiling. There’s a lot of room for growth in all of our guys. I think they understand where they need to grow, and I think they’ll work extremely hard to make that happen. For guys like Khyri and Ronnie, this experience is really, really, really valuable. To have those extra practices, extra games, and then to come into an environment like this which is as tough as you’re ever going to play in and they both performed really well. They did some really good things, and they made some mistakes like freshmen are going to make when you’re playing 25-year olds, but they’re moving the right direction. And our program is moving the right direction.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I felt like we were going to need to play really well, and really be on-point with our scouting report, to win tonight. That was better early, and suffered as we got fatigued and the crowd got into the game. Our communication probably wasn’t as loud and as early as it needed to be, and so we were late on some switches. We got cross-matched in transition a few times with some guys we weren’t used to guarding. And we didn’t immediately recognize what their strengths were. So at times we were stretched out too far on Collinsworth instead of plugging up the lane, where Khyri knew if he was guarding Collinsworth what to do but Maurice gets switched onto him and then in the heat of the battle you don’t think of it because you’re used to chasing Emery all over the place. That happened a few times. And with a few more days of prep would have helped us there, but this is a hard team to prepare for when you haven’t seen them. We did an unbelievable job the first 15 minutes. Coach DeVries did an unbelievable job on the scout, and our guys did an admirable job of trying to pull it off.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“In the second half, we were fine against the zone. We got into the teeth of it, we drove on it, we got good shots, we got the ball into Geoff and got some layups. In the first half, the more we talked about it in timeouts, the more it seemed we stood around. We couldn’t get anybody to the middle at the right time, and we didn’t attack when we did get it there. Obviously the change in defense hurt us, it helped them, and allowed them to get back into the game. They had no answer for us man-to-man, we really carved that up. We just weren’t as efficient against the zone. This year, probably moreso than any of our previous teams, our numbers against the zone have been much much better. Our efficiency has been better, but it just wasn’t there tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“Maurice brought a confidence to our team this year. We all know how confident Maurice is. He’s got a lot of swag. But I think that permeated through our team. And I think it gave us an edge that we didn’t have a year ago. He doesn’t have any self-doubt, and that rubs off. That can be healthy for the program as long as you back that up with a solid work ethic, and I think our guys did that. This group stuck together, too. We had some tough times. We weren’t able to ever really get a streak going. Usually a team that wins 20 games, you go on a run at some point where you win four, five, six in a row. We never really were able to get on a roll like that. Sometimes it was just a possession here or a possession there. There’s great learning experiences that we can take as we move into our postseason meetings. We can talk about some of the mistakes that were more of a constant or that happened way too often.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“It was an unbelievable year. We had over 300,000 fans watch us play, which is a record at Creighton, and that’s what makes us special. We’ve got some good recruiting classes coming in, we’ve got some good guys sitting out — none of that happens without our fanbase, and without our beautiful facility at CenturyLink Center, and the things that our administration does on campus to elevate our facilities so that we can recruit at a national level. We are moving the right direction. I’m really confident I’ve got the best coaching staff in the world, and they do a terrific job, they really care about these guys. So now we’re going to take a little time, catch our breath, and get our guys healthy. Cole and Isaiah will have their surgeries on Friday and then begin their rehab process. Maurice needs to shut down for a little while. He’s got a bad bone bruise in his knee, he’s got the pulled muscle in his groin, and then he really rolled that ankle tonight, so he’s got a couple of bad wheels right now.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
You Said It:
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/712450726522281984
https://twitter.com/Whats_Up_B/status/712451778910924801
https://twitter.com/cjlathrop/status/712468808972128256
Reaction on Geoff’s phantom jump ball…
https://twitter.com/dannyobyrne/status/712457836899409920
On Creighton’s struggles with the zone…
On the second half…
https://twitter.com/ryanholmgren/status/712468530633920512
On the end of the season…
And now we’ll let Mo have the last word!