Bluejay Beat Podcast:
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Key Stats:
The Blue Demons get just 24.4% of their points on three-pointers (314th in the country, fewest in the Big East). They only attempted eight of them in the win over St. John’s, and nine last week against Providence. Creighton forced them to take 24 threes — tied for their most in any game this season.
Greg McDermott said after the game, “Our message the last couple of days was, ‘We’re keeping them out of the paint. We’re going to challenge everything at the rim. And we gotta fight our tails off on the offensive glass.'”
The Jays succeeded in all three areas. They outscored DePaul 28-26 on points in the paint, blocked four shots and altered several others, and were not only even 10-10 on offensive boards they outscored DePaul 14-7 on second chance points.
And here’s a fun fact: this was the eighth time in eight Big East seasons that Creighton has given up 53 or fewer points to an opponent. Three of those eight games have been this season.
Recap & Analysis:
In the Primer, we talked about the biggest question mark heading into Wednesday’s game being how long it would take for Creighton to regain the form they had before their 11-day break. The answer was roughly 10 minutes.
Their first 12 possessions saw them shoot just 2-of-9 with three turnovers. The culprit, at least offensively, was far too much one-sided action — they were generally settling for the first decent look at the basket, and taking it, rather than continuing to swing the ball around to find a great look for someone else. Defensively, they were a step slow on closeouts and surrendered three-pointers to three different Blue Demons in the first four minutes. DePaul had leads of 11-3 and 16-9, the latter thanks to the first career three-pointer for Oscar Lopez, Jr.
“I didn’t know exactly what to expect coming off a layoff,” coach Greg McDermott said in his press conference. “We came out a little bit flat. But after that initial five minutes, I thought they settled in on both ends of the floor.”
“I just think we kinda got our second wind,” he expanded on his postgame radio show. “They hit some threes, from some guys we weren’t that scared of frankly. Lopez hasn’t made a three in his career before tonight and he hit one in that early stretch. We had some good looks that we missed. But I really felt like our guys didn’t catch their breath very well in that first rotation. Once we came out of the second media timeout, I really thought we settled in.”
DePaul had scored 11 points in the first four minutes. They scored just 12 over the remaining 16 minutes of the first half as the Jays ripped off a 25-7 run — at first slowly, then picking up steam like an avalanche. Marcus Zegarowski started the run with a steal that turned into a fastbreak layup for Shereef Mitchell, and in the next handful of possessions Zegarowski added a short jumper and a pair of three-pointers as the Jays grabbed a 23-18 lead.
Zegarowski and Mitchell haven’t played on the floor together very often this year, but the combination of the two quick guards caused DePaul a lot of problems on Wednesday. McDermott said they “turned up the heat defensively,” and they were a big reason the Blue Demons managed just 12 points over their final 25 possessions of the first half, shooting 5-of-24 with seven turnovers.
And in the final minutes of the first half, Christian Bishop put a pair of exclamation points on his team’s performance. First, he made this ridiculous pass to a driving Zegarowski for a wide-open layup as three Blue Demons threw their hands up in frustration over the breakdown.
Moments later, he had a big league swat at the rim:
Leading 34-23 at the break, the Jays effectively put the game on ice in the first three minutes of the second half. They forced three turnovers on DePaul’s first five possessions, drew four fouls on the other end, and stretched their lead to 45-25 after back-to-back threes from Zegarowski and Mitch Ballock. The latter drew smiles from everyone in blue, Ballock included — he caught the ball in the corner, and threw up the shot as he fell away from the basket. In fact, his shot release wound up coming from behind the basket, and still touched nothing but net. It was reminiscent of the one he hit at Villanova a year ago, on the opposite end of the floor.
A few possessions later, Zegarowski and Ballock teamed up to create what looked like a relatively routine pass for a dunk by Ryan Kalkbrenner — one which is deceptively brilliant. Ballock took a half-step toward the three-point line, drawing two defenders with him and opening up the driving lane for Zegarowski who did the rest by blowing past a third defender to the rim. Then, noticing he had all three defenders collapsed on him, Zegarowski knew that meant Kalkbrenner had to be wide open. So he bounced a pass to him in the lane.
From there, the Creighton reserves closed the show. Mitchell, Kalkbrenner, Antwann Jones, and Alex O’Connell saw extended minutes and maintained the lead. O’Connell scored 10 second half points on 4-of-5 shooting. Kalkbrenner added eight points with four boards. Jacob Epperson, still working his way back from a serious injury last preseason that derailed his promising career, got into the action and buried a three-pointer, eliciting some of the loudest cheers of the night.
Their four primary reserves combined for 23 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, three steals and just two turnovers.
“Part of our goal with the 11 day break was to get our bench guys feeling a little more comfortable in our system, and get them some more reps,” McDermott said. “I think we saw the fruits of that tonight.”
And in the game’s final minutes, McDermott cleared the bench — 2020 Big East Tournament MVP (unofficially) Jett Canfield finished the game alongside the scout team of Andrew Merfeld, Sami Osmani, Nic Zeil and Devin Davis. They knew DePaul’s sets better than their own (or at least as well as) after running them in practice this week, so McDermott had them run one of the Blue Demons’ own plays against them.
“In thirty-two years of coaching, it’s the first time I’ve ever called one of the other team’s plays,” McDermott joked after the game.
Bracket Watch:
BracketMatrix.com has Creighton as the top ‘5’ seed in the field, as an aggregated average across the 116 brackets they track. Their average seed is 4.85. So when CBS Sports Network showed the Jays’ resume and their bracketologist Jerry Palm’s projection as a ‘7’ seed, it elicited some strong responses from Bluejay fans. Never mind that Palm isn’t very good at this; he ranks 85th out of the 116 bracketologists they track in terms of accuracy.
Rather than talk about his own team, though, Greg McDermott went on an extended rant about his conference and the lack of respect it’s getting from national pundits. He’s too nice to name them, but we have no such qualms here at WBR — he’s talking about ESPN. Here’s his full quote from the postgame radio show.
“You saw what Butler did tonight, winning against Seton Hall shorthanded. And I’m really proud of what Marquette did. Number One, the fact that they took the game at UNC. I think that’s a testament to Wojo and his staff. But Number Two, I’m not sure — it seems like, and maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like in our league when one of the top teams loses to one of the teams in the bottom half it’s like the world is ending. Yet you see the Penn States of the world (upsetting both Wisconsin and Maryland in the last month), and last night Kansas State against Oklahoma, you see that happening and nobody really cares. It doesn’t really matter, (they say) it’s just one game.
But what hopefully people pay attention to tonight is that our league is pretty doggone good. Marquette has been struggling, they’re down a couple of guys, and they go into a team that’s been rolling and they have a convincing win. I hope that will open some eyes as to how good this league is. There is great coaches in this league, and if you’re not ready to play, whoever is on the other bench is gonna make sure his team is ready to go. Marquette’s win tonight speaks volumes about our league.”
Damn right, Coach.
