Bluejay Beat:
Inside the Box:
The Jays were beaten on the offensive glass 17-9, and Georgetown’s Qudus Wahab had six all by himself. That might have been concerning to Jays fans. Coach Greg McDermott does not share those concerns.
“What I see in terms of offensive rebounding is that Wahab is a big, big dude and we don’t have any big, big dudes,” he said on his postgame radio show, laughing with hosts John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg. “I mean, we were inside him most of the time and he came over the top of us. (Jahvon) Blair got a couple of his own misses, and he’s quick off the floor and long in there, too. The good news is, it was 17-9 in offensive rebounds but we only get outscored by five in second chance points. I look more at what we do after we give up an offensive rebound. We cashed in on ours, and they didn’t as much. The reality of it is I don’t pay a lot of attention to that stat. That’s going to happen to us somewhat. We’ll block out, we’ll fight, and let’s be honest, sometimes we have to hope it bounces to us.”
On a night when four of Creighton’s starters played through foul trouble, the Jays bench came up huge. Shereef Mitchell played 20 minutes, his most since early December, and was his usual pest defensively. But he also had a career high six assists (career high against D1 opponents, that is, as he also had six against Midland). Denzel Mahoney played 21 minutes and was 5-of-14 from the floor, 3-of-4 from three-point range, and had five rebounds.
And then there was the performance of the man, the myth, the legend, Kelvin Jones. Creighton’s grad transfer big man had perhaps his finest game as a Bluejay, with seven points, six rebounds, two blocks and two steals in 15 minutes while playing solid defense in the post. He had a stretch in the first half where scored in the post, dove to the floor to secure a steal, sealed off a help-side defender to open the way for a layup by Marcus Zegarowski, and then scored on a tip-dunk the next offensive possession. It was a tour de force, and earned him a well-deserved standing ovation from the crowd.
“With our foul trouble, those guys came in and just did a great job,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “Shereef got into the paint and made plays for his teammates, and defensively made some great plays. Denzel hit a couple of big shots. And Kelvin gave us a bunch of energy, both with his rebounding and with his defense. We need that kind of production off of our bench.”
Despite the foul trouble, Creighton’s starters were elite. Zegarowski scored 20 points on an efficient 8-of-10 shooting, including 4-of-6 from three-point range. He also had eight assists and four rebounds to fill out an impressive line. Mitch Ballock also had 20 points, making six 3-pointers with four boards and three assists. Ty-Shon Alexander added 18 points. As a byproduct of a blowout win and their foul trouble, Alexander and Zegarowski played only 30 minutes, and Ballock 31, leaving them relatively fresh for Saturday’s finale.
Recap:
“Our guys played hard, they moved the basketball, we shot at a high level and the crowd was awesome,” Greg McDermott said to open up his postgame radio interview. “It was a lot of fun.”
Doesn’t that sum it up perfectly? We could honestly end the Morning After recap right now and you’d know everything you needed to know about the Jays’ 91-75 win. But what fun would that be?
The Jays shot just 4-of-27 from three-point range in Sunday’s loss at St. John’s. They made four of their first six on Wednesday night, emphatically ending any speculation about whether there might be a hangover from that surprising performance. Ty-Shon Alexander hit a pair of threes in the first 42 seconds of the game. Mitch Ballock hit his first two, as well. And after exactly five minutes, Creighton led 14-5.
Georgetown threw everything they had at them — switching up their man-to-man looks, two different zone defenses, a mix of full-court pressure and traps — to no avail.
“We tried multiple defenses — matchup, switching, pressing,” Hoyas coach Patrick Ewing said. “We tried everything but the kitchen sink. When a team’s as hot as they were, nothing worked.”
They did cut the deficit to one, 21-20, with 9:37 to go in the first half after scoring six straight points. Four of them came courtesy of big man Qudus Wahab, who the Jays had little answer for. But when the near-sold out crowd rose to its feet, trying their best to raise the Jays’ energy level, they succeeding in doing exactly that. Over the next five minutes, Creighton blew the game open with a 19-3 run.
Denzel Mahoney started the run with a three-point play. Then Zegarowski hit a three, Damien Jefferson tipped in a missed shot by Mahoney, and it was 29-20. As Georgetown called timeout to stop the surge, Ewing ran onto the court after the officiating crew, enraged about what he believed to be a missed foul call (and he was probably right). Alexander made a pair of free throws off the tech, Ballock sunk a three, and it was suddenly 36-23 a mere three minutes after the Hoyas had cut the lead to one.
Then the crowd really went nuts when Kelvin Jones put his stamp on the game. On three consecutive possessions, he scored in the paint, knocked the ball loose defensively and dove to the floor to secure the steal, and set a strong screen to open space for Zegarowski to drive uncontested to the rim for a layup. A minute or so later, he exploded above everyone on the floor for a powerful putback dunk. If there’s a lingering image from Jones’ best game as a Bluejay, it’s this — Jones posterizing Timothy Ighoefe with ferociousness. But that entire sequence was something else and worthy of linking to a second time.
Foul trouble manifested itself as the second half unfolded, and with 12 minutes to play CU’s lead dwindled to 65-52. They had four players with three fouls and were fielding a lineup they haven’t often used. There was unrest in the arena and a definite sense things were slipping into dangerous territory. But the bench took over. Mahoney calmly buried a three, Mitchell drove into middle of the defense and dished it off to Jefferson for a layup, and then did virtually the exact same thing the next trip down but finished it with his own layup. Mahoney then buried a second three. The 12-3 run, 100% from players outside the Big Three, gave Creighton a 77-55 lead and basically clinched the win. When CU cleared the bench at the four-minute timeout, they were ahead by a game-high 26 points, 91-65.
“Last year and the year before, it was a rollercoaster with our mentality,” Ballock said on the postgame radio show. “We’ve matured a lot, even in the last four or five months. In the past, we’d kind of stray away from what we do. Now, we come together and ask, what caused us to lose this game? We watch film with each other, we diagnose it, we figure it out. It’s kind of like a turnover in a game. If you have a turnover and you let it become a dunk on the other end or into a second turnover, it’s a domino effect. It’s the same thing with wins and losses.”
Creighton followed up their second-worst shooting performance of the year with their best, just three days later. Their 17 three’s were a season high. They emphatically showed that this team is who we thought they were — mentally resilient, tough, and worthy of a title bout on Saturday afternoon.
βWe had a hell of a run in February,” McDermott said in his press conference. “To handle that and be told how great you are when you walk around campus β sometimes even as a 55-year-old, you start to believe it. Now think about being 18 or 19. You have to have the maturity to understand (and say), βOK, thank you. I appreciate it. But practice is at 2:45, weβve got to get some stuff done today because we have another one coming up in two days.β
He continued that theme on his postgame show.
“Fans and media members and social media folks, I think they react to wins and losses. They’re really, really excited and fired up when we win, and really disappointed when we lose,” he said. “As coaches and players, we can’t live in that world of emotion. We can’t do it. Maybe a football team can, potentially, because you have seven days between games. You don’t have a day or two to celebrate after you win in basketball because you got another one coming right away. And you don’t have a day or two to feel sorry for yourself either. We have turned the page relatively quickly all season long. Enjoy tonight. Then it’s over.”
And so they turn the page to the single biggest game of the 10-year Greg McDermott Era, and perhaps one of the biggest regular season games in Creighton basketball history. By virtue of Villanova upsetting Seton Hall later on Wednesday, the race for a regular season title is now up for grabs.
On Saturday afternoon, #11 Creighton hosts #8 Seton Hall on network television with a Big East title at stake. Biggest game of the McDermott Era? You’re damn right it is.
