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Men's Basketball

Morning After: #3 Oklahoma 87, Creighton 74

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Oklahoma, which had been +10 on the boards per game this year, outrebounded Creighton by just four (45-41). CU shot 46% from three-point range against the top three-point field goal defense in the country (holding opponents to 24% per game). Oklahoma scores 21 points off 12 Creighton turnovers, including four crucial points off two consecutive turnovers with four minutes to play.

Standout Performance:

Maurice Watson did a little bit of everything in this game. His line tells part of the story, and it’s a stat stuffing line for sure: 7-16 from the floor, 1-1 from three-point range, and 4-4 from the line for 19 points, five rebounds, seven assists, two steals, and just one turnover in 37 minutes. But the other part of the story is how, faced with a similar situation to the one his team had at Indiana a month prior, he kept the team from panicking. They continued to run their offense, move the ball, and find open shooters. They countered Oklahoma runs with runs of their own. They competed and put themselves in a position to steal a game on the road against a Final Four caliber team, and a lot of the credit for that goes to the point guard who learned from his mistakes a month earlier.

Recap & Analysis:

Creighton jumped out to an early 5-0 lead as Geoff Groselle converted a three-point play and Maurice Watson sliced to the rim for a layup to set an early tone they did not set at Indiana. And though Oklahoma countered with a 12-0 run, the Jays answered right back with back-to-back threes from Cole Huff, and it was 12-11 after five minutes of action.

Most of the game followed that pattern — Oklahoma would push the lead out to eight or ten points, but instead of allowing it to balloon out to 20 or 25 points like they did the last time they played a ranked opponent on the road, the Jays fought back to keep it close. With 3:10 to play in the first half, it certainly looked like the game was headed the way of that Indiana game, as Oklahoma was up 40-28 and perhaps one more mini-run away from putting the game out of reach. Instead, the Jays finished the half on a 10-5 run of their own, capped by a three-pointer in the corner from Khyri Thomas at the buzzer, to go into the locker room down 45-38.

When the second half began, a team maligned for their defense turned in a great stretch of play thanks to some halftime adjustments to their ball screen defense that rattled OU. From the 17-minute mark of the second half until 12:34 remained, the Sooners scored on just three of 12 possessions. The Jays converted on just two of 12, unfortunately, and the deficit remained just out of arms’ reach.

With 12:14 to go, James Milliken made a three-pointer to cut the deficit to 60-55. The defense got even more stiff, and held Oklahoma without a field goal for more than four minutes. Oklahoma’s defense was up to the challenge, holding Creighton to just one field goal of their own, plus a pair of free throws, and helped them cling to a 60-59 lead.

On the next possession, Thomas came up with a steal but got sped up taking the ball across half court and turned it over, forcing Ronnie Harrell to foul to stop a fastbreak dunk. Two OU free throws later, Thomas exploded through three defenders, rose up at the rim, and converted 99% of a dunk of the year candidate. Problem was, the ball bounced off the back iron and out, OU ran in transition, and got a bucket to go up 64-59. The Jays missed two shots on their next possession, both in the paint, OU answered with a basket, and Greg McDermott called timeout to stop the momentum from swinging OU’s way permanently.

As they’d done in the first half, they refused to go away, and on the basis of three-pointers on three consecutive possessions, made it a 71-68 game with 4:57 to go. Then the decisive stretch of the game happened, most of it with Watson on the bench due to a key tactical miscalculation from McDermott. With Watson out of gas and in need of a breather, he opted to bring in a sub at the 4:38 mark so he could get an extra 40 seconds or so on the bench before the media timeout, rather than taking a timeout of his own to get Watson that break without coming out.

Isaiah Zierden took over at point, and the Sooners’ All-American guard Buddy Hield took advantage. He immediately got aggressive on Zierden, pressured him into turning it over, and raced to the other end for a dunk to make it 75-68. On the very next play, Zierden tried, for some inexplicable reason, to throw a half-court pass to Zach Hanson, but the Sooners intercepted it, Hield buried a jumper, and it was 77-68. Watson came right back in, even though the media timeout had not yet come, but the damage was done. Hield hit a three-pointer to make it 80-68, capping a personal 9-0 run that, for all intents and purposes, ended the game.

In the Primer, I wrote this:

I’m not much for moral victories, but the goal in this one should be to show improvement from the Indiana game, which took place exactly one month to the day. How would I measure growth? Keeping the game within 10-12 points for most of the afternoon, playing competent defense and making Oklahoma work for shots instead of getting wide open looks, and actually being able to run offensive sets instead of the “four guys unable to get open and just watching Mo Watson drive to the rim” offense they resorted to so often at Indiana. Doing those, even in a loss, would show this team might be ready to turn a corner once Big East play starts.

While the game ended in a loss, they accomplished all of those things. They kept the game in single digits most of the afternoon. They played better than competent defense — stringing together a series of stops two separate times in the second half that gave them an opportunity to win. They didn’t panic offensively when they got down by double-digits, and continued to run their offense which allowed them to climb back into the game. I don’t like moral victories, but I do like to look for silver linings, and they showed an awful lot of promising things in this game that could serve them well in Big East play. This is a better team than it was a month ago, and it will be a better team in February than it is now.

They Said It:

“When I came with 4:38 to go to get a little 30 second break before the media timeout, we turned it over a couple of times. I need to be able to push through and be able to tell Coach Mac, I can’t come out right now. But regardless of tonight, I trust my teammates. Things don’t always go your way. What I want people to realize is that the score does not tell the story of this game. We battled and we battled, we showed maturity, and I want to take as many positives away from this as we can. It shows our poise that we can hang with a team like Oklahoma, after being down a month before to Indiana and not being able to overcome that 20-point lead.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“I felt like I matched up pretty well against their guards. In the first half, my stomach was a little upset and I couldn’t move as fast as I wanted to. I was short of breath a bit. And I gave up a couple of straight-line drives and dump-offs. That’s not something I will stand for. I’ve tried to focus almost entirely on defense since the Rutgers game in Las Vegas, I think I’ve done a good job of improving there, and I think I’ve been a leader there — the team has fed off my energy defensively. On offense, I’ve been way more under control with the basketball. I think that’s gotten us some extra shots, and that’s also gotten Coach Mac’s confidence back in me. I felt like I played well against these guys, but I was never really worried about me. These are the games I’ve dreamed of playing in. So I was really focused on my teammates tonight. I was focused on making sure James got his shots and Cole got his shots and Isaiah got his shots. We didn’t have Toby, Geoff is still nursing his ankle, and Cole’s still fighting through his shoulder — and I thought Cole showed great resiliency to play through that tonight. Tonight, I scored, I passed, I didn’t turn it over, I rebounded when I needed to, and that’s all I want to do is to make winning plays. To just be the best all-around player for my team that I can be.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“You know, when you play a team (like Oklahoma) that pays as much attention to scouting reports and film as we do, they can tell that we feed off of Geoff when he scores early in a game and establishes his presence early. Well, whenever we threw the ball inside, they doubled him. And they have great shot-blockers, it took me a while to adjust to that. Because of the nagging injuries Geoff and Zach have, they weren’t as aggressive and couldn’t be as physical and powerful as they’ve been the last five or six games. You saw that tonight with the fadeaway jumpers they were taking, and the half-lift they had going up for rebounds. To only lose the rebound battle by four, when we’re sending four guys back on offense, is a testament that we can all come together and still help those guys out. We need to get those guys back in the training room to heal, and let them know that our confidence is still in them. We need them if we’re going to have a successful season.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“I like the fact that we come right back and play on Monday. It doesn’t give us a lot of time to dwell on this loss, and it’s going to show our heart and our mental capacity to focus given the short prep we’ll do tomorrow. It will really show who’s focused and who’s dedicated to this team by how much energy we have to play on Monday. Last season, we were down to North Texas by 30, so I’m ready to play these guys tomorrow if we could.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM postgame

“You know, we got to the rim during that stretch there where it was a one or two possession game for several minutes. It was 60-55 and on the next 12 possessions, Oklahoma only scored three times, but we only scored twice. We had a real opportunity there because our defense did the job. We turned them over, but then when we got out in transition we dropped a couple, we missed a dunk, Tazz lost one as he was going up to shoot it. And then they were finishing some of those same plays on the other end.

On one hand, I’m really proud of the way our guys competed. We got kind of punched in the first half, similar to how we did at Indiana, and we didn’t panic. We stayed on task and continued to run our offense without a lot of turnovers. Then we made some adjustments at halftime with our ballscreen defense that helped us and forced them into some turnovers. We just could not make THE play to get us over the top. Z had a three go in and out when we had a chance to take the lead, Tazz misses a dunk. Our guys are being aggressive, they’re doing the right things, we just couldn’t quite finish the game. And then I made an awful mistake. Maurice was dying and needed a break. I took one timeout to give him a rest earlier in the half, and probably should have taken a second rather than going with a substitute in that situation. When it’s a close game you’re thinking ‘We’re going to need these timeouts down the stretch’ so I hated to do that. Around the four-minute mark I thought we could buy 20-30 extra seconds around the media timeout to rest him, but the turnovers in his absence were really costly for us.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM postgame

“I thought Mo was poised, and when I compare his performance today with what happened at Indiana…he quit running the team when Indiana threw those punches at us. Today, he kept the ball moving, he kept attacking, he kept the ball going in transition. And he picked his spots. If teams are going to go under on a ball screen, they’re giving him the go-ahead to shoot that 15 or 17 footer all day long. He works on it all the time, I see him down there in the gym, but he’s got to be able to make that. And he found his teammates again. He’s the big reason we shot 46 or 47 percent from three-point range against a team that leads the country in three-point field goal defense. He collapsed the defense, gave us opportunities for those shots, and then guys stepped up to knock them down for the most part.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM postgame

“We’re moving the right direction, there’s no question. This team is getting better. If you compare us on December 19 to November 19, we’ve certainly made good strides. The good thing is I think we’ve got a lot of growth left in us. I’m certainly not into moral victories — I will never be into moral victories — but we had an opportunity to win this game in the last six minutes. If you can come in here against a team as good as Oklahoma, you just hope you can get in a position where you’ve got a chance in the last five or six minutes. Our guys did that. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t quite finish the thing.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM postgame

“Oklahoma double-teamed the post, and their double-team rotation is a little different than most teams. They come off the passer on the cut, and we had some things we’d run in practice to counter that. We didn’t execute it early, and Geoff got a little impatient early. But, you know, Geoff and Zach had 15 shots between them. I would guess that’s the most shots they’ve had between them all season long. I thought at times they settled for that seven-or-eight foot jumper rather than taking maybe one more dribble to get a little deeper and then finishing the play at the rim. There were some good things, and obviously Geoff is not 100% — that’s obvious to anyone watching. Zach gave us good minutes. We did not have Toby today, and he’s our best three-point shooter on the year percentage-wise so that’s a blow, and hopefully we can get him back. Maybe there’s a chance he can play a little bit Monday.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM postgame

“We need to get some rest, first of all, and get off our feet. We had some guys log some pretty big minutes. And then it’s going to be a huge mental preparation for North Texas. We can’t do a lot on the floor with these guys that played huge minutes in an emotional game like this. As Josh Dotzler (doing the color commentary for 1620AM) would tell you, sometimes the game before Christmas break can be a little dicey because you’ve got guys with one foot already on the plane headed for home. I talked to them a little bit after the game that our game last year right before Christmas was at North Texas. That was not a pleasant experience. We were down 25 or 26 points early in the second half before we woke up and got back in that game, and then we lost it in the end. So we shouldn’t need any more of a reminder than that. We have to try to finish going into Christmas and take care of the game after Christmas before going into Big East play with a little confidence and a little swagger. We’ll pull some things from today that were positive, there were certainly a lot of them, but we’ll also pull some of the mistakes. The opportunities we had during that decisive stretch, where we had breakdowns on defense or on the boards, or offensively where we failed to make the extra pass. That’s what growing as a team and learning is all about. We’ll really dig into that tonight and tomorrow.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM postgame

You Said It:

I don’t know who this Anthony Polliver kid is but I bet he was pretty good at Creighton hahahahaha A photo posted by anthony tolliver (@atolliver44) on

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