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Men's Basketball

Morning After: #14 Indiana 86, Creighton 65

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton goes 3-18 from three-point range — 3-9 in the first half and 0-9 in the second half — and 8-16 from the free throw line. In trailing 51-32 at the half, the Jays had nearly as many turnovers (10) as field goals (13). And in the first five minutes of the second half, their defense had a solid stretch, holding Indiana to 4-11 from the field, but meanwhile they shot only 3-13 themselves, and were outscored 9-8, squandering their only real opportunity to make this a game.

Standout Performance:

The brutal reality is no one really had a “standout” performance. Mo Watson had 21 points, but had five turnovers and just two assists, and was once again plagued by foul trouble. Khyri Thomas had 11 points on 5-10 shooting, but struggled defensively, had zero steals, and two costly turnovers. Cole Huff was practically invisible, taking only six shots — none in the first half despite playing ten minutes — and scoring four points with three turnovers. If you had to single someone out, I’d go with Geoffrey Groselle, who had six points, seven rebounds (three offensive), and two blocks in 21 minutes.

Geoff Groselle with one of his two blocked shots in last night's game at Indiana. (Photo by Mark Davis / WBR)

Geoff Groselle with one of his two blocked shots in last night’s game at Indiana. (Photo by Mark Davis / WBR)

Recap & Analysis:

In our pregame primer, we noted that in each of Indiana’s four games — two exhibition and two regular-season wins — they’d pulled away thanks to a big run. Basketball is a game of runs, sure, but when a team has an offense as potent as Indiana, those runs can be deadly if you can’t stop them from spiraling out of control. Against EIU in the season opener, it was a 27-3 spurt. Against Austin Peay, it was a 35-17 run over a 10-minute stretch. And against Creighton, it was a 12-0 run that blew open a 14-10 game into a 26-10 rout.

That the Hoosiers’ big run Thursday night came early in the game was double trouble. On the road against a top 15 team, it’s always important to weather the storm early — you can sometimes get away with digging a big early deficit at home (like one year ago to the day against Oklahoma), but you can rarely get away with it on the road. For the first six minutes of the game, it appeared the Jays were doing just that. They were struggling, but hanging around, and when Toby Hegner hit a three-pointer at the 13:53 mark to cut the deficit to 14-10, it looked like they might have survived the early onslaught.

Over the next two minutes and three seconds, Indiana put an end to those hopes, as they rattled off a 12-0 run to push the lead out to 16. With Assembly Hall shaking and the Hoosiers rolling, Creighton panicked. They began hoisting bad shots early in the shot clock. They made bad passes. They stopped moving. They turned it over. And they allowed those mistakes to follow them to the defensive end of the floor, where an already shaky defensive unit looked lost. The lead would grow as big as 27 points, and was never really competitive.

Still, this was a game most observers had pegged as a loss all along, so while it’s a missed opportunity, it’s not like the result was unexpected. With a young, inexperienced team, it was frankly too early in the season for a game this tough. They weren’t ready for that level of competition yet, and it showed. They looked shell-shocked, a little intimidated, and when things began snowballing, they panicked. And with Indiana locked in, playing about as well as they can play, in front of a raucous home crowd, it was the equivalent of a buzz saw. The sheer magnitude of offensive weapons Indiana threw at the Jays made their defensive weaknesses that much more glaring.

The hope is they got that out of the way last night, and they’ll figure out how to improve their defensive weaknesses (and how to better deploy their offensive weapons against better opponents) as the season continues. The fear is this is more or less who they are against top-level competition, and expectations for the year should be a lot closer to that prediction of a ninth place finish than any of us want to admit. The reality is we won’t know the answer to that until this team is tested again.

The good thing is they’ll have plenty of chances, both over the next month and in conference play, to prove themselves. The belief is they will, and this can still be a team that wins 20 games and make it back to the postseason.

Watson-CoachMac-Indiana

Coach Greg McDermott talks to Maurice Watson during a break in the action Thursday in Bloomington. (Photo by Mark Davis / WBR)

They Said It:

“My biggest takeaway is that, after looking at the stats, I had five turnovers. That’s unacceptable for me. As a team, we didn’t rebound. We didn’t follow our gameplan, because we knew they were going to run, they were going to get in transition, and they were going to rebound. We were going to do the same thing. But we couldn’t get out in transition in the first half because we couldn’t get stops. I think that our immaturity and our youth showed when they made that big run in the first half to take the 26-10 lead. We took some tough shots, a lot of NBA threes with 28 seconds left on the shot clock. We wanted to skip the ball ahead, get to the basket, and not settle for those type of threes. And we can’t let our offense dictate our defense. If anything, our defense needs to be the constant, regardless of whether our offense is there or not. This was a new environment for us, this is what we wanted. But if we were going to have a game like this, I’d rather it be the third game of the year and not in February or March.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“We didn’t dig in defensively. We knew they had a lot of shooters, and they got going early. Blackmon hit a couple of tough threes, Yogi hit his first three, and we didn’t really lock in. Guys were taking straight line-drives to the basket, and backdoor cuts, which we knew Troy Williams wasn’t going to kill us from the perimeter. He wasn’t going to do it from outside. But we got caught ball-watching. His teammates got him involved. He had like four or five backdoor cuts. That’s unacceptable for a team that has high expectations like we do. Yeah, we’re young, we’re inexperienced, but at the end of the day we’ve been playing basketball since we were four or five years old. We know the right things to do and the wrong things to do. We need to take individual pride in our defense, instead of depending on letting guys go and using the new rules as an excuse. Yeah, we played a top 10, top 15 team, and they’ve played together, they have chemistry, but we have chemistry, it’s just not the same as a top 15 team that’s been together for a couple of years. We really just need to have individual pride and that comes from looking yourself in the mirror. And that needs to happen for everyone on the roster.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“I need to pick my spots better to stay out of foul trouble. When I’m a step slow, I tend to use my body a little bit to compensate and I didn’t think the body was going to be that big of a deal this year, I thought it was all hands. So I’ve gotten fouls on a couple of bumps. But I just can’t keep putting my team in tough positions. I don’t want to say I want to give up anything, but I need my guys to understand that in earlier stretches of the game that you guys need to help me out more just because it messes up our rhythm if I’m out of the game. I’ll have my breaks throughout the game, but through tough stretches I can’t be sitting on the bench. Against UTSA it wasn’t that big of a deal but you saw tonight, it was.

That’s my fault. It’s on me. I need to watch film, I need to work in the gym at getting lower, at not using my hands so much, and that’s stuff I need to improve on. Tonight when we get on the plane, I’ll watch (game film) and I’ll probably be up all night. I might even go into the gym tonight when we get back and shoot some free throws with my guys. We didn’t shoot well at all from the free throw line tonight. But the thing I really want to do, though, is make sure my team keeps their heads up. We have young guys. A lot of freshmen, a lot of guys who sat out last year, and we need each other. If I can’t keep my guys upbeat after a loss like this, it’s going to carry on and turn into a losing streak of two, three, four games like we saw last year. And that’s something we can’t do.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“I also need to do a better job of getting my teammates involved. Indiana wasn’t leaving shooters early, and so I was aggressive, because I knew they were going to do that. I was prepared to be aggressive tonight. But I need to be able to get my team’s confidence going. I need to talk to my guys, tell them we need you, and that’s what I was trying to do but it’s hard to do when you’re on the bench in foul trouble and you’re down 20.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“If Cole doesn’t touch the ball for two or three possessions, but he’s playing hard on defense, like anyone else you want to be rewarded for the hard work that you put in on both ends of the floor. Cole’s an anchor for us in practice, so when he doesn’t get shots in a game it’s a little disappointing. I’m trying to tell Cole, as long as I have the ball, you’ll be good. At any point in time, I can call a play for you, Coach Mac trusts me to do that. That’s something Coach and I have developed. I’m at the point where I can push somebody else — run a ball screen for Cole, or run an isolation for Cole. He’s a dangerous threat. And once Cole finds his rhythm he’ll be fine. We can’t have a game where he takes six shots. I expect Cole to be one of our leading scorers this year, and he puts in the work to deserve that. So I have to find the way to get him the ball.

And we have to make sure that everything is not perimeter based. We can get Cole in the mid-post, we can get him inside, he can dribble and drive. We have to get him confident and we have to get him rolling. Me and Cole will hit the gym tomorrow, probably go out to lunch or something just so me and him can talk. We got to get him to go up to his teammates and say, ‘Yo, I was open on that last play.” Cole’s very quiet. He can’t be quiet, he needs to be one of the leaders on this team, and we’re trying to get him to do that on defense as well. We’ll go out to lunch tomorrow, and discuss some things, and talk to Coach Mac too just to get everything on the same page. One loss isn’t really a big deal, but it’s a big deal if you don’t learn from it. All I want to do is make sure my team learns from this.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

Maurice Watson has a moment of contemplation by himself on the court during Thursday's loss at Indiana. (Photo by Mark Davis / WBR)

Maurice Watson has a moment of contemplation by himself on the court during Thursday’s loss at Indiana. (Photo by Mark Davis / WBR)

“The start of this game did not look at all like us. It’s hard to explain, though I understand it. It’s like guys want to do something to make it better. Taking a quick shot, that’s a challenged shot, is not the answer to try to make things right. And I almost felt like it was twofold, where the guy with the ball was like ‘I’m going to go make a play,’ but the guys off the ball were like ‘I’m just going to stay out of his way. I’m not going to go set a flare, I’m not going to make a hard cut.’ Our urgency to get open on the top of the floor, to get the ball reversed, was not where it needed to be. Usually our offense is good when the ball is popping. It wasn’t popping tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Defensively, we got exposed in some areas. They’re a tough cover, with the guys they have on the perimeter that can shoot, and the guys they have that they can put the ball in their hands to drive downhill. And then you roll a guy like Bryant to the rim…it’s a tough cover. It really stretches your defense. I thought we competed a little harder defensively the second half. We got to spots better. But the reality of it is, you can’t start a game like that in this building. Especially not when they’re as good as they are. You can’t expect to shoot it like we did from the three-point line, and the free-throw line, and have a chance to be in the game either. We have to be able to make some shots from the perimeter for us to be successful.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“How to get Cole going is a good question. I personally think we need to get him engaged in other areas, not worry about his offense, and let it come. I think he’s pressing so much, and we as a coaching staff probably have to manufacture a few more shots for him. And he’s got to try to make some plays. I think he can, I think he wants to, but he just had a tough night tonight, especially with the turnovers the first half. Cole’s going to work hard, I promise you that. He’ll be the first one in the gym, if not tonight, then first thing in the morning trying to figure some things out. We need production from that spot. It makes it so much easier when we have Cole or Toby to stretch the floor, and we didn’t get a lot out of that spot tonight. That hurt us, because I thought at times Geoff and Zach did some good things. We need them to be a little bit more consistent but I thought for the most part they were pretty good.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I’m probably not going to like the film the first time I watch it. We just…I wish we would have had more time to prepare, because there’s so many things that they do that you have to understand who’s got the help and where your coverages are. We messed a lot of it up tonight, where the wrong guy helped and we got beat on a backcut because we got caught helping when we shouldn’t have. A couple of those were young, inexperienced mistakes. Tazz had a couple of them where he got beat on a backcut because he was over-helping. It’s an example of a guy trying to do the right thing and helping his teammate, but not understanding the situation and that didn’t call for his help because they were directing the ball a different direction. Those are the things we have to work out. I’m confident that this team will come back.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“It definitely was a huge test. You could tell the level of play that they brought. I feel like they’re going to be a great team down the road. I feel like it got us going, the plan, they’re so good offensively, I felt like if we wouldn’t have had that defense, it would have been an up and down game and could have gone either way. So I feel like our game plan went well.” -Indiana guard James Blackmon, Jr. in postgame press conference

“We knew and they learned quickly that we were playing a very, very tough, physical opponent. Obviously the respect for the Big East is high. They weren’t as familiar maybe with Creighton’s personnel as they became during the quick time of film and being on the court. But they quickly saw that it was a physical team, very aggressive team. We kept preaching how well-coached they are and how disciplined they are with what they want. Frankly, they were better at some things that we want to be good at. Their spacing, staying committed to it and their guard rebounding, and I thought our guys responded.” -Indiana coach Tom Crean in postgame press conference

“We needed to not come off shooters. We had tremendous respect for (Isaiah) Zierden, and he made the one three from deep because we just didn’t get a hand up. I’m sure Greg (McDermott) will look at it, just like I would, and you can see some shots that you know your team would probably make.” -Indiana coach Tom Crean in postgame press conference

“(It was a) great win for us. Fully expect to see that team continue to get better and better as they integrate their transfers and freshmen into that, and would fully expect them to be a ranked basketball team as the season goes on.” -Indiana coach Tom Crean in postgame press conference

“A high-quality opponent. I think with the way they were shooting the ball averaging 98 points, I don’t care who you’re playing if you’re scoring 98. We watched as much film from last year. We game planned hard for (James) Milliken and Zierden. We certainly know what (Maurice) Watson’s capable of. When you watch his old film from BU (Boston), even in the short time he’s played for them, he was 12 assists, I believe, four turnovers coming into the game. I mean, he’s quick, strong. Before he’s done, he’ll be one of the elite point guards in the country because he’s got that low center of gravity, sees, finds people. When he gets that shot, he was a low 30s percent shooter at BU, when he get that’s shot going, he’s going to be really hard to deal with.

So that was a big deal for us, because they’re a very physical team. Greg’s team always, always are going to play physically and sound. And they can bring a lot of people out there. We were concerned too about Thomas’s cutting and rebounding and getting out on the break. So they’ve got a lot of strengths. Fortunately our guys were able to handle that.” -Indiana coach Tom Crean in postgame press conference

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