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Men's Basketball

Morning After: #23 Creighton 75, Eastern Illinois 53

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[Box Score]

Key Stats: Creighton has their fifth different leading scorer in five games (and in this game it was Geoffrey Groselle! With 15 points!). CU wins the battle of the boards 38-25, including a 25-12 edge in the first half, thanks to a team-leading 10 rebounds from James Milliken.

Favorite Moment: This is Geoffrey Groselle’s fourth year on the Hilltop, and the redshirt junior has had a career plagued by injuries and highlighted by performances in blowouts — seriously, the fourth bullet point on his 2013-14 season review for GoCreighton.com says “Was team’s first big man off the bench on Dec. 3 at Long Beach State”, showing the lack of highlights to draw from during his sophomore campaign. That’s what you get when you’ve scored 32 total points in two seasons, and eight of them in one game vs Butler last January, where he had eight points and four rebounds playing in mop-up time.

This year, he’s finally healthy, the seven-footer has shown flashes of being a player that could be a solid contributor, and accordingly, Geoff has logged productive minutes early in games. Then there was Tuesday night.

Checking in at the 14:52 mark of the first half, he straight up went to work. First, he made a layup on an assist from Milliken to make it 16-10 Jays. Then on the next possession, he scored on a rather nifty up-and-under move to shield the defender with the rim. After a stop, he scored again, this time on a pass from Austin Chatman. And then after another defensive stop, he scored ANOTHER bucket, a really nice one-handed lay-in with his left hand, to give him eight straight points. EIU called timeout to regroup because they couldn’t stop Geoffrey Groselle — think about that sentence again — and the CLink went bananas. Here was a guy that had worked hard but had been derailed by injury, finally able to show how good he might be able to be. To see his teammates beaming with joy as he ran off the court to a standing ovation was pretty cool.

Incidentally, while we’re talking about favorite moments: as a huge hard rock/heavy metal guy, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the rendition of the national anthem on electric guitar by Aiden Fisher, the 12-year old prodigy and YouTube sensation from Papillion. Bad-ass, sir. Bad. Ass.

Quick Recap: Most people thought this would be a close game, at least for a while, given EIU’s defensive style and results through four games. It wasn’t.

Instead, Creighton scored four points before EIU even had a possession, thanks to a quick turnover the first time the Panthers touched the ball, and led wire-to-wire. They’d lead by as many as 33 points at one juncture, and showed a killer instinct by putting EIU away early in the second half and allowing Coach McDermott to play some reserves in extended minutes during most of the second half.

Austin Chatman did the early damage himself, scoring on a jumper to start the game, then connecting on a second-chance opportunity after a three-point miss from Toby Hegner. After Will Artino made one-of-two free throws the next trip down court, Chatman nailed a three-pointer to give Creighton an 8-2 lead two minutes into the game.

EIU tried to claw back into the game, but after cutting the deficit to 14-10, Groselle scored those four buckets on four straight possessions, and they were never within ten points again the rest of the game. After stretching the lead to 39-20 at the half, Creighton went on a 16-6 run to open the second half to push the lead out to 29 and push the Panthers out of reach for good.

That let Coach Mac give extended minutes to the bench, and rest the starters heading into a big weekend in Florida –Chatman played just 23 minutes, Devin Brooks just 18, Toby Hegner 20 and Will Artino only 13 — thanks to building a comfortable lead, and then putting the opponent away.

James Milliken played a team-high 29 minutes, and responded with 7 points, 10 rebounds, and an assist, went 2-2 from three-point range, and played solid defense. The aforementioned Groselle wound up with 15 points on 7-8 shooting. Leon Gilmore, playing a career-high 11 minutes, showed flashes of what he’ll be able to contribute down the line — he had four rebounds in those minutes, and a very slick assist to Groselle where he drove the lane, drew a defender, and passed it around said defender while in the air to the big man. And walk-on Tyler Clement logged 13 minutes at point guard, allowing the Jays’ top guards to take most of the second half off; in those 13 minutes, he ran the offense efficiently, while scoring four points of his own.

It was an unexpectedly comfortable win, but for a team that now sits at 5-0 and ranked 23rd by the Associated Press, maybe it shouldn’t have been so unexpected. They’ve passed through the first two weeks of the season with flying colors, and now enter the toughest stretch of the non-conference slate — vs Ole Miss and potentially Cincinnati in the Emerald Coast Classic, then true road games at Tulsa and at Nebraska — with a chance to really make some noise. By winning handily, they showed that at least initially, being ranked hasn’t caused them to lose focus. That’s a very good sign as they enter a tough two-week stretch of hoops away from home.

Quotables:

“The rest of the guys really did a good job of coming off ball screens hard, and then finding me. Most of my points were just layups. I wasn’t really doing anything special.” -Geoffrey Groselle on 1620AM Postgame

“I’ve been feeling really good lately. I’ve been running really well, jumping well. This is the best I’ve felt, physically, since before my freshman year. The underwater treadmill has helped a lot. And I can’t tell you how much I hated the old gym floor — the new one is so much easier on our legs, I can really tell. The new court is softer to run on, and with the underwater treadmill I’m not putting as much stress on my body.” -Geoffrey Groselle on 1620AM Postgame

“I’m very happy, and very proud of Geoff. He’s remained ready, and is playing the role that we ask him to play. We needed him tonight. We felt like we could hurt them inside, as Olivier is very talented offensively but we thought we could run at him and try to get some easy ones for us. Geoff did a good job of catching it deep and keeping it high and scoring it. That’s what we want to see out of him, and he created some separation for us in the first half.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Geoff’s practiced very well. Sometimes, Geoff’s problem is when the game starts getting up-and-down and it’s fast, he gets worn out. But on the practice court, he kicks everybody’s tail. I think his feet are getting better, and as they continue to get better and he feels better, I think the speed of the game doesn’t affect him as much. So I was really pleased tonight. And it’s a heckuva luxury for me to have a guy like him, where when we get a couple of guys saddled with foul trouble, you still have another guy that can go out there and produce. Not many teams have that. We’re fortunate to have him.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“James made a couple of shots, and our bigs are doing a good job of blocking out, and that leads to our guards rebounding — we had one game where Austin had 11 rebounds, and James had 10 tonight. If our bigs do a good job of creating that vacuum, then our guards should be able to go in and clean it up. I’ve been on James because I think he’s athletic enough to be a really good rebounder for us, and tonight he went and got it. I thought he made good decisions with the basketball. Obviously he made a couple of threes, which was good to see because he’s been struggling shooting it. He was in the gym after the game Sunday night getting extra shots up. It’s nice to have him playing with some confidence as we head to Florida tomorrow.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“The challenge with having five different leading scorers in five games is knowing where to go with the ball, and when to go to them. That’s the challenge. When you need a basket, when you need to get an easy one, when you need to get to the line, what’s the best way to do that? Austin got it going early tonight, and so we got him some shots after that. That’s going to kind of be who we are — whoever gets in going, we have to feed that horse, so to speak. We got it to Geoff when he got it going, guys were looking for him, and when a big guy catches it and finishes it, our guards are going to look for them more. But it constantly has to be by committee. Last year, we were thinking of all kinds of ways to shake Doug loose given the attention he was drawing. But with this team, we still have to be creative. Our spacing is so important because that allows guys like Austin and Devin to get in the paint and create and make things happen.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“In the early going, we haven’t had much adversity, aside from being down 20 to Oklahoma on our home floor. We’ll see what happens moving forward as we go on the road. It’s a different deal when you’re playing on a neutral floor against a good team. And as long as we have that ranking next to our name, we’re going to get everybody’s best shot.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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