Key Stats:
In a tale of two halves, Creighton was about as dominant as you could hope for in the first, and downright awful in the second. In the first, CU shoots 58.8% overall (20-34) and 7-15 from behind the arc (7-15), while dishing out 14 assists on 20 made baskets and grabbing an offensive rebound on eight of the 14 missed shots.
Meanwhile in the second half, Creighton commits 10 second-half turnovers, including four from Maurice Watson. They shoot just 40% from the floor (10-25) and 3-10 from outside, while assisting on only five of their made baskets. They were outrebounded 23-13, and grabbed just two offensive boards. They committed 13 fouls. And defensively, they allowed UMKC to heat up, with the Kangaroos scoring 48 points on 16-34 shooting (47.1%) overall and 5-8 from long range.
In other words: first half very good, second half very, very bad.
Standout Player:
In his first collegiate game, Justin Patton nearly had a double-double with 12 points and 8 rebounds. And on back-to-back possessions early in the game, he took a lob pass and threw down an alley-oop, firing up both his teammates and the crowd. Like his team, however, his first half was tremendous — 10 points, five boards, and a block in 11 minutes, while shooting 4-6 from the floor and 2-3 at the line — and his second half was forgettable. In the same 11 minutes after halftime, Patton took just one shot and missed, went 2-4 from the line, grabbed only three boards, and was out of position defensively far too often.
But there’s always going to be mistakes from a freshman in their first game. Even the great ones like Ryan Sears and Doug McDermott, who also started early in the career as freshmen, made “freshman” mistakes early. I’ve found it’s more instructive to look at the good things they did in those early games — big or little — and try to extrapolate where their ceiling is for growth, rather than dwell on mistakes that they’ll clean up as they mature as players and learn from film.
And if those first 11 minutes are any indication, get excited, Jays fans. Wow.
Recap & Analysis:
Creighton led wire-to-wire, jumping out to a 12-2 lead early on the strength of Patton’s back-to-back dunks and five points from Marcus Foster. And when Patton converted a three-point play at the 10:22 mark to give the Jays a 29-10 lead, it looked like the game was headed for boatrace territory.
To their credit, UMKC continued to play hard and execute well, Creighton did not, and the game changed. CU led 37-16 with 7:26 to go, and from that point on, UMKC traded baskets with them, ending the half with a stretch where they matched Creighton point for point, 18-18. That run began with a pair of three pointers from Dashawn King and another from Isaiah Ross, matched by threes from Watson and Foster. And though the Jays went into the locker room still up by the same 21 points they’d led by at the 7:26 mark, a closer look showed some cracks, especially defensively.
And those cracks were fully exposed in the second half, though not right away. In the first 6-1/2 minutes of play, CU outscored UMKC 21-13, continuing their crisp offensive execution from the first half. Three of their first four baskets were the result of an assist from a teammate, including two slick passes out of the post by Patton — one for a three-pointer by Khyri Thomas, one for a three by Cole Huff. They took a 76-48 lead with 13:45 to play after a three-point play was converted by Watson, and over the next couple of minutes, Coach Greg McDermott brought in reserves. With Davion Mintz, Isaiah Zierden, Martin Krampelj, and Kobe Paras getting time on the floor, the Jays suffered several defensive breakdowns, and UMKC took advantage. A 17-7 run over the next five minutes cut what had been a 28-point lead down to 18, and by the time the starters re-entered a game they probably figured they were done with, they couldn’t re-capture their focus or energy.
UMKC continued executing — first Xavier Bishop stripped Watson and raced down court for an easy layup to cut it to 14, then Martez Harrison hit a three to make it an 11-point game. Another three by Bishop made it a nine-point game with 2:10 to play, and suddenly what remained of the 16,000 fans in attendance were very uneasy. Visions of the 2014 South Dakota game — where the Bluejays led by nine with 2:59 to play, only to see the Coyotes score on six straight possessions to force overtime — flashed through many minds, including mine.
Creighton closed this one out almost in spite of itself, getting just one field goal in the final two minutes and going 1-2 from the line, and if the shots had continued falling for UMKC over the last two minutes I shudder to think about what might have happened. But CU escaped, and now they have three days to prepare for a team in a different galaxy from UMKC — the ninth ranked Wisconsin Badgers.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s this: Creighton didn’t run many sets, and didn’t do anything out of the ordinary defensively, and thus did not give Wisconsin much of anything to look at film-wise. There weren’t many, if any, plays to get Marcus Foster to the rim — nine of his 14 shots came from behind the arc, which won’t happen Tuesday night. The offense did a lot of standing around and as a result, Watson over-dribbled which led to several of his turnovers. That won’t happen Tuesday night, either. They didn’t double-team anyone defensively, or employ many of the switches on ball-screens that are such a big part of their defensive identity (at least until late in the game).
Wisconsin could very well beat Creighton straight-up on talent and experience alone. And they’ll need to, because game-planning for the Jays based on what they see in their film room won’t do them much good.
They Said It:
“It’s 76-48, and I go to the bench and bring some young guys in. We had some breakdowns, we had some turnovers, and we had like three or four fouls ‘bang-bang-bang-bang’ so all of a sudden they’re in the bonus. We just kind of lost our edge after that. It was 76-48 and from that point on we scored 13 points after scoring 76 in the first 28 or 29 minutes. I just thought our ball movement and our offense really got stagnant. We stood around and watched Maurice dribble a lot. Some people might say Maurice dribbled too much, but I say with the way we were standing around, he had no choice but to dribble. Our movement just wasn’t as crisp as I would like, and then defensively we had some blown assignments.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“We won the game. It’s November. Look around, and Xavier beat Lehigh by three points. Wagner, the team that was here last year (in the NIT) beat UCONN tonight. It’s November, it’s not perfect, it’s not going to be perfect. And the reality of the situation is, this is way better for me as a coach than winning by 35 because at noon tomorrow when we practice, I’ve got their attention. They don’t feel good about how they played the last 12-13 minutes, so they’re going to listen. There’s going to be some great things to watch on film from the first 26-28 minutes of the game, and there’s going to be some things that make you scratch your head from the rest of the game. That’s part of learning and part of growing and developing as individuals and as a team. I don’t like the way we played late, certainly, but in a lot of ways for me, to help move this team forward as quickly as we can, it probably needed to happen and thankfully it happened in a situation where we won.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“We got Cole out there for 15 minutes, Zach for 10 or 11, which is about all they can handle right now. Zach did some really good things off the bench, Cole had a nice run to start the second half and wasn’t as good when he came back in. It’s tough for him when the knee gets tight to get it loose, so that’s something we’ll have to keep experimenting with and keep working on to make sure we’ve done everything we can so that when we call his number, he’s ready to go.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I thought our transition game in the first half was good. We didn’t run a lot of our stuff tonight. We’re saving most of that for who we play next week. But when we did run some stuff, the execution was OK. Defensively, our ball screen stuff — we took their two best players out in the first half. Neither got anything going, they had some other guards get shots we were OK with them shooting, and they knocked them down to their credit. Then we came out and punched them to start the second half and took the lead out to 28. We had a chance to put them away, but didn’t. But there was a lot of good things. We made the extra pass several times. We put pressure on the rim with some of those lob passes to Justin. And he’s got to continue to attack that rim even if it’s not open. Somebody has to stop him. Somebody has to guard that — the defense has to commit somebody to him. For Maurice or Marcus or whoever has the ball, it’s their responsibility to figure out who they’ve committed and make the appropriate pass. We did that early on.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“I thought Justin got a little straight up-and-down as he got fatigued, and as I explained to him, when you’re straight up-and-down defensively you can only make one play. He needs to be low and quick so he can make multiple plays at the rim. He’s got to maybe stop the ballhandler but still challenge the shot. Late in the game on one of the three point shots, he did a great job on the switch — that’s what we wanted to do, switch on their ball screen — and Justin stayed in front of their little guard, cuts him off, and then there’s another ball screen and he doesn’t switch. So he did the first one right, he knew what to do, but he couldn’t get to the second one and that’s part of growing and learning. You practice that stuff, practice late-game situations, switching on threes, and hope they’re really locked in and engaged with what you’re trying to do. They might not have been tonight, but they will be next time because of what happened tonight. The reality of it is, whether we’d have won by 35 or won by 7, we’ve got a heck of an opponent coming in here Tuesday night. We’ve got three days of hard work to get ourselves ready.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
You Said It:
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