Bluejay Beat Podcast:
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Recap & Analysis:
With just under eight minutes gone in Saturday’s game, Villanova led 17-15. The Wildcats had rebounded 58% of their missed shots to that point and were winning all the little battles; Creighton was having success offensively by attacking the rim, scoring on two dunks and three layups, but their defense seemed a half step slow. It lacked a spark. Worse, Denzel Mahoney was on the bench with two fouls.
Everything changed on the next possession. After a missed shot in the paint, two Bluejays — first Damien Jefferson, then Marcus Zegarowski — hit the deck in a mad scramble for a loose ball. Neither ended up with it, but after a second missed shot, and then a third, both secured by Villanova, the Wildcats’ Jermaine Samuels corralled their fourth missed shot of the possession while he was falling out of bounds and tried to throw it off of Jefferson. But Jefferson, also falling out of bounds in the opposite direction, caught it and threw it off of Caleb Daniels instead. The wild sequence lit a fire under both the Bluejays and the socially distanced crowd of 2,544. It was like flipping a light switch — Villanova had grabbed six offensive rebounds after that possession in eight minutes, and had just seven more over the final 32 minutes.
Coming out of the timeout, Zegarowski hit a three. Mitch Ballock deflected a pass on the next defensive trip, Jefferson swatted it away, and then running in transition Ballock drained a 35-foot three. Creighton led 21-17 and never trailed again.
Zegarowski scored 17 in the first half and 25 for the game, looking better — healthier — than he has at any time since March 7, 2020. And he knew it. With Zegarowski’s swagger back, Creighton’s killer instinct from February and March of 2020 returned, too. This layup where he drove the baseline, shot the ball behind his back and used the glass to bank it in? Mercy. The slow dribble to lull a defender into a false sense of security, and then the explosion past them to the rack? That’s vintage Zegarowski, and the kind of confident shot he hasn’t finished consistently over the first 20 games of the season as he’s played his way through rehabbing two lower body injuries.
His jump shot looked better, and more confident, than it has at any point this season, too. He made three 3-pointers in the first half, and when this one hit nothing but net to give CU a double-digit lead at 42-32, the normally stone-cold-serious Zegarowski even flashed a smile — briefly — as he ran back on defense.
It is true that this happened against Villanova, a team that lacks a true rim protector or an elite on-ball defender. Zegarowski didn’t have to worry about a 7-footer blocking his shots at the rim, and had more space to shoot threes off the dribble than he normally has. But it’s also true that he had more of a spring in his step than he has so far this season.
Creighton’s coaches believed that Villanova’s help-side defense would stay glued to their shooters on the perimeter. That gave Zegarowski space to operate, and opened up the inside for lobs to Christian Bishop. He scored 10 first half points on 5-of-6 shooting. Among them? This screen slip and cut to the rim:
And this one:
Zegarowski and Bishop combined for 27 points in the first half on 11-for-16 shooting. And when Villanova adjusted their help-side defense at the half, the Bluejays simply beat them in other ways. Denzel Mahoney scored seven points in the first three minutes of the second half. Mitch Ballock made five 3’s on six tries after halftime. With all four cooking at once, the Jays were unguardable.
Ballock’s first three of the run started with a steal by Bishop, who brought the ball up the court and ran the offense like a guard. And it was made possible by Jefferson passing up a good look at a three for a great look by Ballock.
It was Jefferson again moments later setting up Mahoney for a three that made it 52-41 Jays.
Then Zegarowski beat Villanova at their own game, using a stop-fake to get his defender in the air, then juking around him for an open look. The 8-0 run opened up a 54-41 lead and forced Jay Wright to call timeout.
“He’s so smart,” Wright said after the game. “Every change we made, he read it. And he really sliced us up. I give him a lot of credit. He’s a hell of a player.”
Wright and the Wildcats had no answers. He mentioned in his postgame press conference that Creighton’s balance makes it difficult to prepare for them, because you don’t know which shooter is going to beat you until they’re doing it. And sure enough, out of that timeout, Ballock hit three consecutive three-pointers. The first came after Zegarowski zipped a pass to him in the corner:
The second was heavily guarded and touched every inch of the rim before rattling home. And the third came after he stopped on a dime, reversed direction, and used the brief window that he’d created to sink a long three. Ridiculous.
Zegarowski said he sensed that shot was the final dagger, even though 11 minutes remained. “I thought that shot, it kind of stamped it. That was amazing by Mitch.”
It was. Villanova was never closer than 14 the rest of the way. And Ballock punctuated the win with one more three, fittingly set up by a drive from Zegarowski who kicked it back out to Ballock as the shot clock was expiring.
This strange COVID season has been a grind, and however you want to describe it — Creighton has played to their level of competition, struggled under the weight of expectations, failed to rise to the challenge of playing as the favorite, or simply not been consistent — they have shown flashes of the brilliance of the 2019-20 team. And back in the role of underdog, against the kings of the Big East, they showed what’s possible when everything is clicking.
“Certainly there’s pressure because there’s a level of expectation in the program,” McDermott said before the game. “So I think they feel bad.”
“I’m really proud of the guys,” he added afterward. “We’ve been the hunted for a month, probably been the favorite in every game. We’ve been ranked, so everybody has a little motivation in a year where it’s kind of tough to find motivation to play us. Today we got to play a top-five team in the country. It gave us a little more juice.”
You’d rather they play this way all the time, regardless of opponent, but if this is what a locked-in, inspired Creighton team looks like, it bodes well for March when every game is like this. And they’ve been a different team — a looser team — since holding a players-only meeting in the wake of an embarrassing home loss to Georgetown. The pressure McDermott alluded to was starting to get to them. So they aired it out, put their chips on the table, and responded with a pair of road wins against teams who had beaten them at home.
Then came Saturday, when they played their best game of the season so far.
Key Stats:
This was both Creighton’s best offensive game of the year (1.410 points per possession) and one of their best defensive games, too. They held Villanova, the fifth-most efficient offense in the country, to 37.5% shooting (their second-worst mark of the season).
Individually, Christian Bishop outplayed Jeremiah Robinson-Earl on both ends. Bishop was 6-of-7 from the floor for 16 points, with 10 rebounds, an assist, a steal, and two blocks. Robinson-Earl? 3-of-13 for eight points, with seven rebounds, two assists, two steals, and a block. Over the last five games, Bishop is now averaging 15.0 points on 78.4% shooting with 8.6 rebounds a game — while defending the likes of Qudas Wahab, Theo John and Robinson-Earl well below their averages (a combined 9.0 points and 6.3 boards on 47.1% shooting).
The point guard battle was won decisively by the Jays, too. Collin Gillespie was 3-of-12 from the floor for eight points, with six rebounds, three assists and a steal. Marcus Zegarowski, meanwhile, had 25 points on 10-of-18 shooting, five assists and three rebounds. This was the best game Zegarowski has played in 2020-21, and it could have been better — of the eight shots he missed, at least four are shots he normally makes.
Denzel Mahoney only had seven points, but they all came early in the second half and they opened up the floor for Zegarowski and Mitch Ballock to do what they did later in the half. The threat of a third shooter with the hot hand — plus Bishop scoring in the paint — puts opponents in a bind. It’s what made the Jays’ so deadly at the end of last season, and what has been missing this year. One or two players shoot well on any given night, but they’ve rarely had it going all at once.
Bigger picture, Creighton’s resume continues to be bizarre. These four teams have the best combined records against Q1 and Q2 opponents:
Gonzaga 11-0
Baylor 8-0
Michigan 8-1
Creighton 11-2
Three consensus Final Four favorites, and then the Bluejays, who aren’t considered among that group because they have three horrendous Quad 3 losses — and could end up with a fourth, as Butler is teetering on the edge between Q2 and Q3.
And in the Big East title chase, they’re now basically in a dead heat with Villanova. The Wildcats are still ahead by percentage points in the standings (.800 to CU’s .750), but the Wildcats have played six fewer league games because of the pandemic. If Creighton wins out — including a second win over Villanova the final week of the regular season — they’ll earn at least a share of the title.