Recap:
If you had to pick one word to describe Sunday’s surprising, demoralizing loss, “trainwreck” is the first one that comes to mind. 15-point favorites over an in-state rival, the Jays combined a poor shooting performance with sloppy defensive play. Meanwhile, led by an in-state kid tired of seeing his school lose, Nebraska played with the sort of determined fire and laser focus that CU typically brings to this game and used those attributes to turn the tables.
Derrick Walker and Sam Griesel set the tone early, with Walker scoring three layups on Nebraska’s first five possessions, two of them assisted by Griesel. Despite that quick start, it looked like the Jays had weathered the storm when they got back-to-back threes from Trey Alexander and Baylor Scheierman to go ahead 12-8.
Instead, the storm had only just begun. On their next six possessions they missed three wide-open three-pointers and turned it over three times. One of the turnovers led to a breakaway layup. As the struggles mounted, they strayed from their offensive principles, compounding matters with ill-advised crosscourt passes and passes where they didn’t use a pass fake or ball fake to set the defense up.
Credit Nebraska with executing their gameplan — even if it entailed a bit of a gamble. Fred Hoiberg and his staff knew the odds were stacked against them, and knew they couldn’t take everything away defensively. So they decided to gamble that the Jays’ shooting slump from Thursday would carry over, and they packed the paint. They sent double-teams every time the ball got near the paint, and stopped dribble penetration and denied passing lanes. Without a player able to drive directly at their defense and force them to react, the Jays needed to hit jump shots — think midrange jumpers from Alexander, threes from Scheierman and Nembhard — to loosen up the paint. And those shots weren’t falling. So the defense in the paint got tighter. And the pressure to hit outside shots got higher.
The Huskers also essentially abandoned the offensive glass to get back on defense, which combined with a CU defense that forces few live ball turnovers, left the Jays with little to no transition game. And few avenues to speed the tempo of the game up.
It was an ugly first half, but much like the game at Texas, the Jays were hanging around because of their defense.
“Outside of the early stretch where Walker got some easy ones, the first half was our best job this season so far of not allowing offensive struggles to impact our defense,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “I thought we dug in and did what we had to do to keep ourselves in the game when we weren’t making shots. We all felt like if we continued to get those shots, the water was going to settle to the right level and we’d knock a few in. We didn’t.”
Nebraska started the second half much like they had the first — two layups by Walker and a third from Griesel, taking a 31-23 lead. Then the Jays’ defense tightened, and those were the only three baskets the Huskers made over their first 14 possessions.
“There was a real opportunity to grab control of the game,” McDermott said, “but unfortunately we only scored on three of our first 16 possessions. So we actually lost a little ground despite playing defense as good as we were.”
As often happens in games like this, the frustrations from missing shot after shot start to transfer to the other end of the floor — and that’s when the game gets away from you. Trailing 31-30 with 13:19 to play, the Jays’ defense looked silly in surrendering a decisive 11-3 run that featured six points from Griesel and a litany of blown assignments, rotations and poor fundamentals. The audible groans from a sold-out crowd told the story to anyone who thought they eyes might be deceiving them.
“We talk about all the time, the first minutes out of halftime are one of the most important segments of the game. We try to own that every game,” Scheierman said. “But today they came right out and punched us in the mouth. It set us on our heels and we were battling back the rest of the game.”
Down 42-33 after that run, the Jays made one final push, getting within five with 6:31 to go. But Griesel had the dagger — a breakaway dunk and free throw that seemed to break Creighton’s spirit. The Huskers pulled away from there, with chants from the few red-clad fans in attendance filling the arena as Jays fans streamed for the exits.
“It’s frustrating. I feel bad for our guys, they’re wiped out right now,” McDermott said. “And I feel bad for our fans. We had a great crowd in here today. We weren’t able to get any sustained runs where we could really get the crowd into the game. It wasn’t the crowd’s fault, this was a tough game to watch when we’re not making any shots. I’m disappointed we couldn’t send this great crowd away with a victory.”
It had been 27 years since Nebraska beat Creighton in a regular season game in Omaha. That THIS is the season that streak ended — when Creighton is ranked in the top ten and picked to win their league while Nebraska is picked dead last in the Big Ten — only makes it that much more hard to grasp.
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton took a school-record 40 three-pointers on Sunday, making just 10. The previous record of 39 came in a similarly maddening game — a December 21, 2014 loss at North Texas where they also made only 10. They fell behind by as many as 27 points in that game and needed a 31-7 run that encompassed nearly 14 minutes of the second half to make a game of it. Hell, re-reading my recap of that one sounds like it could have been written about Sunday’s loss.
The mantra after a week where Creighton made 14-of-67 from three-point range (20.8%) is that the Jays are a good shooting team who had a bad week. And true, that one week cratered their shooting percentage from 38.2% (ranking 40th) to 33.3% (179th). Nebraska correctly surmised that the Jays’ poor shooting in Austin would carry over, and honestly, it wasn’t that big of a gamble. If the Jays made somewhere close to their averages, they would have won by 15+ as expected. If they struggled, the game might be close and maybe Nebraska could steal a win.
And if they had a repeat of Thursday? Jackpot.
“It was really the same plan St. Thomas used,” Greg McDermott said. “And it didn’t matter who we had over there on the weak side, when we skipped the ball over there they sent a help defender to plug up the post. Whether it was Bello or Baylor or Trey or Art, it didn’t make any difference. That shot was going to be open, and it was open, and just like against St. Thomas we didn’t make enough of them.”
“Bottom line is we’ve recruited a bunch of guys to shoot, and they’re going to need to make shots,” McDermott added. “The last thing they’ll ever do is look over at me and see doubt on my face. I’m going to continue to pump confidence into these guys because they’ve proven it, they’ve prepared and done the work in the offseason, they can make those shots. I’m certain it will happen.”
With nine games in the books, the sample is still pretty small — and I’m as guilty of it as anyone, citing the improved numbers prior to this week as a sign of improved shooting in the Primer before the Texas game. The reality of it is 32 of the 40 attempts are classified as “great” shots, and some of them are so wide open that most high-major scholarship players would be crazy to pass them up. Here’s a supercut of them, if you can stomach re-watching:
As Matt wrote, the players who attempted a shot in that clip came in shooting 36.6% from deep this season. A breakdown of the 32 shots:
- Alexander (40.9%): 3-8
- Scheierman (39.3%): 2-8
- Farabello (20.0%): 4-5
- Kaluma (29.0%): 0-5
- Nembhard (36.7%): 0-4
- Kalkbrenner (42.9%): 0-1
- Miller (66.7%): 0-1
“I’ve taken a vocal leadership role on this team, and I told the guys it’s a long season,” Scheierman said, sharing some veteran knowledge. “There’s going to be ups and downs, but we’re a great team and we will get this figured out.”
Here’s hoping Finals Week gets them back on track before a pair of tough games in Las Vegas next weekend.
