Key Stats:
Creighton shot under 50% (48.3) from the field for the first time this year, and finished with a season-low 66 points — including just 21 in the second half. They had 21 fastbreak points in the first half, and ZERO in the second. They were out rebounded by 10 (40-30), grabbed only three offensive boards, and got just seven points and seven rebounds total from their bench.
It was their worst performance of the year by a wide margin, across the board, yet whether it was by luck, skill or chance, they won by a single point. They won’t have many more games this year, if any, where they look this bad on both ends of the floor. The concern is this: even in games where they’ve played at a high level, their free throw shooting has been mediocre, and that’s magnified in games like this.
That they won by a single point despite going 3-9 from the free throw line, including missing the front end of 1-and-1’s twice in the final minute, is nothing short of miraculous. They have 19 games remaining against D1 opponents, and in all of them, they will lose if they miss free throws in the final minute of a one-possession game. Oral Roberts could not make them pay for it; everyone in the Big East can and almost certainly will. The free throw issue has been an annoyance over the first 11 games, but will cost them dearly over the next 19 if they don’t clean it up.
Standout Performance:
There’s a lot of ugliness on the statsheet after this one, especially in the second half. Marcus Foster scored 22 points including 10 of their first 12, but had just six after halftime and shot 3-8 (and 0-2 from three-point range) in the second half. Believe it or not, those six points were tied with Justin Patton for most on the team after the break. Yikes.
For the game, Mo Watson had 13 points, 10 assists, and shot 6-10 from the field with three boards, though he also had seven turnovers. But when they had to have someone make a play, he did, from grabbing a huge defensive rebound with nine seconds to play to preserve the one-point lead, to forcing a travel with 2.9 seconds left after a missed free throw gave ORU a last gasp at a game-winning shot (or, alternatively, making it look enough like a travel to get the call, depending on your rooting-interest-slash-perspective!).
Recap & Analysis:
Oral Roberts is a pesky team that took Michigan State down to the wire, should have beaten Ole Miss in the Paradise Jam, and made teams like Baylor and Missouri State play a full 40 minutes to beat them. But at the end of the day, they’re also a team that entered Saturday night without a win against a D1 opponent, and were a 25-point underdog to the tenth-ranked Bluejays for a reason. They played well enough to capitalize on the Jays’ worst outing of the year by nearly pulling off the monumental upset, and that’s a huge credit to Scott Sutton’s team. But with all due respect, this should not have been this close.
Creighton started both halves with big runs, only to take their foot off the gas pedal and allow ORU to hang around. They jumped out to a 21-11 lead, led by ten early points from Foster and another of their patented Watson-To-Patton alley oops:
…annnnd then their defense immediately surrendered a 7-0 run to erase it. Looking a step slow for most of the night, they were beat to almost every 50/50 loose ball, were consistently out of position for rebounds, seemed to miscommunicate on both ends of the floor, blew defensive assignments time after time, and frankly, were outhustled and outworked by a Golden Eagles team desperate for a win.
They staggered to halftime up 45-38, though they probably felt like they’d withstood ORU’s best run. Creighton’s been a strong second-half team all year, ORU has been the opposite, and when the Bluejays pushed the lead out to 54-41 just two minutes into the second stanza it looked like that would be the case again. Especially when Watson is doing things like this:
Oral Roberts has a pair of players with local ties — Norfolk, Nebraska native and former Omaha Maverick Jalen Bradley (16 points) and former Bluejay Darian Harris (six points and eight rebounds, both season highs) — and especially in the second half, they played with the intensity and energy of players with something to prove.
A 12-2 Oral Roberts’ run trimmed the lead to just three, with Bradley scoring six points and Harris assisting on two made baskets and rebounding two misses during the spurt. A three-pointer by Harris trimmed the lead to two, 58-56, and after tying the game on a bucket by Albert Owens, Harris assisted on a bucket by Owens to give ORU the lead.
While Bradley and Harris were raising their teammates’ level of play, Creighton was sputtering. After scoring nine points in the first 2:20 of the second half to take that 54-41 lead, they scored just 12 points the rest of the half. TWELVE POINTS. Over the next eleven minutes, Oral Roberts outscored them 24-6, with the Bluejays taking ill-advised, quick shots that often came before potential offensive rebounders were even in position should the shot not go in, or committing sloppy turnovers.
While the starters began the slide, the bench finished it off. Clinging to a 54-49 lead, Isaiah Zierden checked in for Foster and immediately committed a turnover that led to points. Leading 58-53, Tyler Clement and Martin Krampelj came in for Watson and Patton; Clement made a terrible pass on his very first offensive possession that led to the fast break layup from Owens to tie the game at 58 (and force a Creighton timeout to get the starters back in).
Having surrendered momentum and given ORU the bravery to think they could actually win, not even the starters could stem the tide. Foster missed an ill-advised three that led to the Owens basket to give ORU a 60-58 lead. Patton, Foster, and Zierden missed shots on the next three possessions and ORU took a 62-58 edge. Patton briefly stopped the bleeding with a dunk to make it 62-60, but then Owens — the 6’9” center who’d made three 3-pointers all year and would be encouraged by almost any defense to take as many of them as he desired — banked in a three from 25 feet out. It was a ridiculous shot, but the kind that goes in when it’s your night; now up 65-60 on the tenth ranked team in the country with five minutes to go, it was increasingly looking like it was indeed their night.
It would be the last points Oral Roberts scored in the game. The Jays took timeout and instituted a 1-3-1 zone, and it immediately knocked ORU off their game. They took wild, off-balance shots three straight possessions, and then the Jays went back to their man-to-man defense to keep them off-balance. The result was eight straight missed shots and three turnovers in their last six possessions — leading to zero points over the final six minutes of the game, which gave their offense just enough elbow room to eek out the win.
In between the defensive stops, Patton scored buckets on back-to-back possessions to cut the deficit to 65-64, the latter coming on a dunk with 4:15 to play, and Foster nailed a jumper to give them the lead 66-65 with just over three minutes to play.
The drama wasn’t over, of course, because while their defense had stopped ORU cold, their offense once again sputtered. Neither team scored a point over the final three minutes, a stretch that included a terrible off-balance three-point attempt from Cole Huff, a wild three-point attempt early in the shot clock from Foster, and a sloppy turnover by Watson. With nine seconds left, Owens missed a good look from the right wing but Watson fought off two ORU players for the rebound and got the ball to Khyri Thomas, who was fouled with 5.7 seconds to play. Bizarrely, CU called timeout before the shot to substitute players for the final defensive possession, and in essence iced their own shooter — and wouldn’t you know it, Thomas missed the front end of the 1-and-1.
Watson jumped in front of Kris Martin as he raced up court and got him to travel (or, again, make it look enough like a travel to get the call — ORU fans probably feel like it was a home-cooking call, and I can’t say I blame them.) The turnover resulted in another foul, this time sending Huff to the line, where he too missed the front end of the 1-and-1. That left the door open a crack with 0.9 seconds left, but Watson slammed it shut by intercepting a full-court pass to end the game.
Before the game, I wrote in the Primer that barring something crazy, Creighton would win. This certainly qualified as crazy. But they escaped with the win, somehow someway, and remain undefeated after 11 games. Here’s hoping they learned the lessons that often come after a first defeat without actually having to suffer the defeat. Things only get tougher from here on out.
They Said It:
“I’ve never experienced a good week in practice during Finals Week. And I’ve experienced very few good games on the heels of Finals. For whatever reason, I thought we looked fatigued. And obviously we didn’t practice much this week, and when we did it was shorter because guys had Finals exams all over the map so it’s really difficult to get together.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I’m disappointed in the way we played. We had some blatant missed coverages defensively at times. When you’re rolling, a good shot that’s a quick shot is OK. When you’re struggling, there’s a difference — then you need a great shot, not just a good one. I’m not doing a good enough job explaining the difference to our guys. In the film room tomorrow, I’ll take care of that, because you have to take great shots when you’re struggling to score. Having said all of that, we scored on six of our final 29 possessions, and we found a way to win the game.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“The 1-3-1 zone we’ve practiced more than we’ve ever practiced it, and though we haven’t used it much this year, it saved our bacon tonight. We were active in it, and it forced them to shoot the ball a little quicker than they were doing against our man-to-man. Obviously, their plan was to take 20-22 seconds off the clock each time, then put their head down and see what happened. They wanted to shorten the game. It was a 33-possession half in the second half, which is by far the fewest possessions we’ve had in a half this year.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I just think guys tried to take matters into their own hands far too much tonight rather than trusting the pass and trusting the ball reversal. Oral Roberts struggled with five-man ball screens all night, but we didn’t get to them often enough. When we did, Justin got something at the rim or someone got an open three, and Martin got a couple going to the rim. We didn’t play particularly well at all. It was our poorest game of the season and certainly Oral Roberts had a lot to do with that. They controlled the tempo extremely well minus the first six minutes of the game. They stuck to their plan, and we could never get comfortable with that tempo of a game. We still tried to play fast by taking quick shots that sometimes weren’t great shots, and made some foolish turnovers at times as well.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I challenged the team to be mature enough to learn from a victory that very easily could have been a defeat. Was it close to a defeat because of what Oral Roberts did or because of what we did? Now obviously, they did some really good things. But if we are who we are supposed to be, this doesn’t happen. That’s my challenge tomorrow and Monday leading up to Arizona State.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“We were harping on our guys at every timeout in the first half and at halftime and at every timeout in the second half: get to the offensive glass. Oral Roberts wasn’t going to push the ball. There wasn’t a risk to going to the offensive glass. They’re not going to run it up and shoot a quick shot. We just couldn’t get guys there consistently. I’ve gotta watch the film to see if it was a case where our guys were there but the ball bounced the other way? Sometimes that happens. And sometimes you have a game where you go and you go and you go, and the ball always bounces the other direction. Or, did guys not do their job? That’s something we evaluate on film and will work to correct.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“Over the course of a season, as much as you’d like to play at an unbelievably high level for 30 games, the reality of it is 10 of them you’ll play a little better than you really are. 10 of them you play about where you should. And the other 10, for whatever reason…and I’ve watched a lot of NBA games with Doug there now, and it happens there too, where you just can’t believe the way the Spurs or Golden State or whoever plays on a certain night. It happens there, and it happens in college basketball. This was one of those tonight. The key is, in those 8, 9, 10 games, do you find a way to win? Tonight we found that way. Last year I’m not sure we win this game. We did some good things defensively at the end, held them scoreless at a time where we had to hold them scoreless, because we couldn’t make a shot.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
You Said It:
https://twitter.com/mue11er/status/810296425284325376
https://twitter.com/ryanholmgren/status/810299131566624768
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/810305326222340097
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/810306772347002880
https://twitter.com/mue11er/status/810308358305628160
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/810311641078304768
https://twitter.com/prspcderek/status/810313500451106816
https://twitter.com/prspcderek/status/810314556190892032
https://twitter.com/cjlathrop/status/810315195511959552
https://twitter.com/cjlathrop/status/810315698631282688
https://twitter.com/cjlathrop/status/810316537752145920
https://twitter.com/cjlathrop/status/810316775296499712
https://twitter.com/prspcderek/status/810317002011267072