Key Stats:
In the first half, Ole Miss missed 19 shots and grabbed an offensive rebound on 12 of them, leading to 17 second-chance points. In the second, the Rebels missed 16 shots but grabbed only five offensive boards — and just two in the final 14:42 of the game — leading to a paltry three second-chance points. They scored 15 fewer points in the second half, or basically the difference between what they got in second chance points between the two halves.
Rebound, rebound, rebound!
Standout Performances:
“Last night, I didn’t shoot the ball all that well,” Marcus Foster noted on the 1620AM postgame show. “My teammates told me, we got you this game, we know you’re not shooting well tonight. So I told them tonight, I got you all this game. And we were struggling, so I took it upon myself to get us going on the offensive end.”
Man, did he ever. In 37 minutes of play, Foster was 9-15 from the floor, 5-8 from three-point range, 2-2 from the line, grabbed six boards, and dished out three assists. In the first half when the Jays were struggling to make shots, he kept them in the game with three 3-pointers and an ability to make plays for himself. In the second half, he played a big part in finally breaking Ole Miss’ 1-3-1 zone by putting his head down and getting dribble penetration into the teeth of the zone for high-percentage baskets at the rim, which had the side-effect of opening up some shooting lanes on the perimeter for his teammates.
It is not an exaggeration to say Creighton does not win this game without Foster. The Jays’ struggles to score against zone defenses over the past 5-6 years are at least partly attributable to the lack of a player like Foster — a guard who’s big enough to attack the zone head-on instead of passing over it. Without a slasher, you’re left to try and beat a zone with jump shots, and, well, that hasn’t typically gone very well for the Jays.
“I saw that Ole Miss really wanted to get the ball out of Maurice’s hands,” Foster explained on the 1620AM postgame. “I saw that they were pressuring him, so I was just trying to find little openings where I could get to the rim and score. Teams are going to try and throw different defenses at us, and that 1-3-1 zone was a very good idea because we didn’t understand how to break it in the first half. After talking about it at halftime, we found spots where we could break it and score.”
Recap & Analysis:
While Creighton’s first two games in the Paradise Jam were characterized by offensive fireworks, the third was summed up by something else:
Guts.
Ole Miss’ big, physical front line wreaked havoc in the first half, while their guards abused the Bluejay defense for seven 3-pointers. It was a frustrating half of basketball, as offensively the Jays had no answers for the Rebels’ 1-3-1 zone and defensively they seemed powerless to keep them off the glass.
“They were punking us on the rebounds, plain and simple,” Toby Hegner said on the 1620AM Postgame. “It just wasn’t us. We looked at each other, looked at the bigs, looked at the guards, and said it had to be a team effort to go get rebounds.”
Hegner noted the seniors on the team had a long talk at halftime, and came out determined to play tougher. “We came out punching, and finally — I don’t even know when it was, but we threw the final punch, that’s for sure.”
Foster agreed, saying on the postgame show that “In the second half, we just got tougher, honestly. They were bullying us on the glass, they were bullying us at the rim. We got tougher. That’s all it was.”
The Rebels out-rebounded the Jays 26-11 in the first half, including 12-4 on the offensive glass, and combined with a 7-17 shooting effort from three-point range, it was a minor miracle they weren’t blowing the Bluejays out. Thankfully CU matched their three-point output with seven 3’s of their own, and were able to hang around until they could figure out how to stop the Rebels. Part of stopping them was figuring out how to defend DeAndre Burnett, who scored 11 points on 3-5 shooting from three-point range in the first half. Coach Greg McDermott took the blame for that on the postgame radio show.
“I probably put our guys in a tough spot defensively with no prep time in terms of how we were trying to defend DeAndre Burnett with ball screens. We were covering him differently than everyone else. I think the confusion and maybe miscommunication led to some of their baskets.”
The Jays switched back to a standard defensive coverage at halftime, knowing that it meant Burnett would probably be able to drive with his right hand without the ball screens. “Our guys did a good job of leveling him off,” Coach Mac said on the postgame show. “The guards kept in front of him, Justin rotated over and blocked a couple of shots, changed a few shots, and our block-outs were better the second half.” He did score 11 points in the second half, but none from three-point range, and that allowed the Jays to mount a comeback.
Trailing 50-40 just 75 seconds into the second half, Creighton began chipping away, unleashing a barrage of three-pointers to get back in the game, often trading twos for threes and slicing a point off the lead at a time. Cole Huff started it with a long three, Watson followed with a steal and a three in transition, and then Foster nailed one to cut the deficit to 56-51. Another three from Foster made it 59-54, another from Thomas cut it to 61-57, and then a pair of threes from Toby Hegner sliced it first to 63-60 and then 64-63. A third trey from Hegner gave the Jays a 70-68 lead with 8:41 to play, and though Ole Miss tied it twice, they never again led.
Creighton’s defense held Ole Miss to just four baskets on their final 19 possessions, capping a gutsy, gritty second half comeback with the type of hard-nosed intensity that will pay dividends in Big East play. From the time Ole Miss led by ten, 50-40, the Bluejays outscored them 46-27 the rest of the game — covering nearly 19 minutes of the second half.
Hegner’s trio of three-pointers were huge, both in terms of this game and for his confidence going forward. “I haven’t been shooting the ball the greatest,” Hegner said on the postgame radio show, “but I took it upon myself these last couple of days to really sit down and find the inner me, focus, and find that confidence again. Let me tell ya, this is the start of something, for sure.”
Hegner’s re-emergence will be key going forward, as the win came at a huge cost. Zach Hanson went down mid-way through the second half with an ankle injury, and though the specifics aren’t yet known, all indications are that he’ll miss significant time. McDermott said on the postgame radio show “We’re going to be without Zach for awhile, I’m afraid. Somebody’s going to have to step up. It’s his ankle. He really rolled it over. We’ll get it looked at when we get home, but the early diagnosis does not look good.”
In the meantime, Creighton has piled up quite an NCAA Tournament resume over the past six days, beating a tourney team from the Big Ten (Wisconsin), a tourney team from the ACC (NC State), a bubble team from the SEC (Ole Miss) and a team from the Pac-12 (Washington State) that, at a minimum, will help CU’s NCSOS given the gauntlet of teams the Cougars will face that league which will keep their RPI in the top-half of D1. Now the 12th ranked Bluejays return home for a trio of home games they should be favored to win handily before heading on the road to Lincoln for a showdown with Nebraska on December 7. The tough part of the non-conference slate is over, and the Jays are 5-0.
They Said It:
“It’s hard to tell sometimes when to shoot jump shots and when to take it to the rim. I really like going to my three because that’s what I’ve been all my life is a shooter. I try to get my three going early so the defense pressures the three-point line, which opens up lanes to the basket later on.” -Marcus Foster on 1620AM Postgame
“Ole Miss challenged us on the floor and I challenged us in the locker room (laughs). There was some finger-pointing going on in the first half. It’s come so easy for us the last couple of games, we forgot how we had to gut it out and grind it out against Wisconsin and how you have to beat good teams. The ball got stuck, it didn’t move the way it needed to, we took quick shots, and we got out-toughed on the glass.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“For our guys to respond the way they did was terrific. Ole Miss scored on four of their last 19 possessions. So we rebounded and defended at the time of the game where we needed to.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“We had a lot of guys step up. Maurice Watson was the best point guard in this tournament. There’s some really good point guards in this tournament, but we have two guys on the all-tourney team and one of them’s the MVP. That doesn’t happen without the guy that has the keys to our bus.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“Maurice only had one assist in the first half, but he finally got into the teeth of that 1-3-1 zone and made them commit to him and Justin. We were trying to get Justin behind that defense all night long and he wanted to stay high all the time. He’s a young player and he’s learning to have a feel for where he needs to be on the floor against certain defenses. He has to improve and it will improve. But after not playing well in the first half and then having to go with him down the stretch because Zach got hurt, I’m really proud of him because he wound up doing some good things.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“We wanted to attack the 1-3-1 zone initially. That puts a lot of pressure on the center in the middle, though, and we were too content to just pass over the top of it. We’ve played some 1-3-1 ourselves, and that’s exactly what you want the offense to do. I think our guys were a little tired, honestly. We settled for the path of least resistance a little too often tonight. In the four-minute timeout, Maurice had just taken a three-pointer with nine seconds left on the shot clock. I told them, when things get tough, we need to attack. We can’t settle. Get into the paint, make a play for yourself or your teammates. We did a much better job of that in the second half.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“There’s so many examples of unselfish play. Marcus had just hit a couple of threes, he’s got an open one in front of our bench, and he makes one more pass to Toby. That shows a little bit about what we’re made of. Maurice had 7 assists, but we had 11 assists outside of what he did. A lot of guys were doing a good job of finding their teammates tonight. Our shooting has been incredible. Tazz hit some big shots, Toby was great tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“At times, Justin’s trying to block shots that he can’t get to. That’s part of his maturation process, understanding ‘If I leave my feet and I don’t get it, we are in big trouble on the backside.’ Right now he’s either not doing it at all, or he’s going for everything. We’ve got to get him a little bit lower, a little more active, and watch a lot of film so he understands the situations where he just needs to wall up and make them score over him, the times where he needs to block-out, and the times where he just needs to go clean up the glass. He’s going to get better every game. We could not have asked for more through his first five games. He’s doing some really good things for us.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
You Said It:
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