Creighton came into Sunday’s game leading the Big East with a 39.5% shooting percentage from three-point range. St. John’s was dead last at 29.5%, and 307th in the country.
So of course, the Jays proceeded to shoot 14.8% (4-of-27) — their second-fewest made threes in any game this year, and worst percentage (even worse than the San Diego State game where they were 4-of-23 for 17.4%.) And St. John’s went 14-for-22 (63.6%), a season high in both departments.
The Jays were willing to live with the Red Storm taking jump shots, especially when it was secondary scorers taking them. They packed the paint to take away driving lanes from St. John’s guards and paint touches from their big men. It’s an imperfect strategy despite the fact that it’s been successful far more often than not this year.
“They’ve got some guys that are electric off the dribble that you’ve got to provide a little bit of help or they’re going to get to the rim,” Greg McDermott said. “There was a couple of guys we were okay stepping off of and daring them to shoot the shot, that’s kind of what we did at our place. It was successful there. Our plan today was to press up on those guys a little bit better. Obviously, we failed miserably in that regard.”
For most of the first half when St. John’s was building a double-digit lead, and again in the final minutes of the game when they blew it open, the Jays’ defense was a step slow. They were late on close-outs, mistimed their rotations, and got caught flat-footed in ball screens over and over again. The biggest beneficiary: Greg Williams, Jr. — he scored a career-high 21 points on 7-of-10 shooting from long range. He’d never scored more than 11 in any game during two seasons at St. John’s before Sunday.
St. John’s made three of their first six 3-pointers. Creighton took just two, missing them both, as the Johnnies’ zone defense ran them off the line on possession after possession. Kelvin Jones and Damien Jefferson kept them in the game — Jones with a pair of putbacks off of offensive rebounds, and Jefferson with six early points off of drives into the heart of the zone for easy jumpers. But defensive breakdowns would soon make it impossible for the game to stay that way.
By the under-12 timeout, St. John’s had made 4-of-9 from three-point range and had 19 points on their first 15 possessions (1.27 points per possession). By the next stoppage, a 14-2 Red Storm run gave them a 28-16 lead.
“I feel like we came out too soft, we came out too cool,” Jefferson said. “And coming out too cool against a team like this that needs wins, the outcome’s going to be bad.”
There were enormous stakes in this game, and for the Jays to come out flat — or cool, or whatever word you want to use to describe it — is disappointing.
“You have to be ready and on point every time you play (in the Big East), or you’re going to get beat,” McDermott added. “It doesn’t matter who you play.”
Late in the first half, Jefferson had 13 points on 5-of-6 shooting with zero turnovers, while the rest of his teammates combined for 14 points, 7-of-23 shooting, and four turnovers. Yikes. As WBR’s Matt DeMarinis wrote on Twitter at that moment, the game would have been a “massacre” without Jefferson’s hot start. It wasn’t all that great even with it.
Mitch Ballock had been wearing a mask for the first 16 minutes of the game to protect his broken nose, but after airmailing a three-pointer, missing a mostly-uncontested layup, and turning it over he shed the mask. Without it, he promptly drained a three. It was part of a late first half surge that trimmed the deficit to 44-37 heading into the locker room.
They continued that surge as the second half began, with Jefferson as the catalyst — he scored six points and had eight rebounds, five of them offensive, in the first seven minutes after halftime. And as a result Creighton actually took the lead briefly, 56-54, on this play of the year candidate (if it came in a game anyone in blue wanted to remember, that is).
Jefferson grabbed a defensive board and started a fastbreak, kicking it to Ty-Shon Alexander who missed a shot. With the ball sailing out of bounds after the miss, Jefferson somehow managed to save it with a behind-the-back pass. After a half-second to reset, Ballock drove to the rim, missed a layup, and who was there to clean it up? Jefferson, who went right back up with the ball for two points and the lead. It’s precisely the kind of play that can jump-start a team stuck in neutral.
After that sequence, it really felt like the Jays were going to win — they’d adjusted at the half to cut down on St. John’s open looks from the perimeter, they were playing with energy on both ends of the floor, and their own shots were finally falling. But almost immediately, the wheels fell off. Nick Rutherford, Greg Williams Jr., and LJ Figueroa hit back-to-back-to-back threes to put St. John’s back ahead 63-56, a 9-0 run in 90 seconds that turned the tide of the game.
That run seemed to deflate the Jays. A 17-1 Red Storm run a couple of minutes later blew the game open, with Williams hitting three 3’s during the spurt as Carnesecca Arena went crazy and Bluejay fans watching on TV sat in disbelief.
“Creighton, no questions about it, is an incredible basketball team,” St. John’s coach Mike Anderson said. “Today was one of our better days. It’s amazing when you make shots and that ball goes through the hole. It just energizes your whole team.”
“St. John’s was terrific,” McDermott noted. “Obviously, they shot the ball at an incredibly high level.”
Jays Drop in the Rankings, But Not Much
Sunday’s loss in Queens was certainly demoralizing, but it didn’t prove all that damaging beyond the race for the Big East regular season title. The Jays dropped one spot to #11 in the new AP Top 25 poll. They fell only three spots in the Coaches Poll, to #14. And in the most important metric, the NCAA’s NET, they’re now number 13, dropping from eighth. Hardly a disaster.
It wasn’t all that damaging in the eyes of most bracketologists, either. BracketMatrix still lists the Jays as the top ‘3’ seed, with an average seed of 2.81 across the 96 brackets they track. FS1’s Mike DeCourcy has them as a ‘3’ taking on UC Irvine, with the winner of Iowa/USC awaiting in the second round. Stadium (and Bluejay Banter’s) Tim Krueger still has them on the 3 line, too, taking on New Mexico State in St. Louis with either Illinois or Rhode Island waiting in the second round.
With that said, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi dropped the Jays to a ‘4’ and moved them to the Cleveland pod — 13 seed Vermont in the first round, and the winner of 5 seeded Iowa vs either Wichita State or Utah State awaiting in the second round should they advance.
Big East Title Hopes Still Alive
The loss means that Creighton no longer controls their own destiny, but it does not mean they can’t win the Big East anymore. Seton Hall hosts Villanova on Wednesday night, and if the Wildcats win, the Jays can still capture a share of the regular season crown by winning on Saturday against the Pirates.
Expecting Myles Powell and the Pirates to drop their final two regular season games to lose the title is expecting a lot. But it’s not impossible, and it wouldn’t even be the first time in the McDermott Era that the Bluejays won a title that way.
In their final season in the MVC, the Jays lost three straight in early February to fall behind Wichita State in the standings. In their final road game, a BracketBusters showdown at Saint Mary’s, they were blown out (though the final score of 74-66 was deceiving). They returned home for two games, one against a bottom-half opponent in Bradley and one against the first place Shockers. CU dominated the Braves 80-62, and were handed a gift when Wichita inexplicably lost at Evansville 59-56. With the door opened, Doug McDermott and Co. kicked it down, busted it apart and sold it for scraps — behind 41 points from McDermott the Jays won 91-79 to clinch the regular season title.