Bluejay Beat Podcast with special guest Jahenns Manigat:
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Recap & Analysis:
Of all the ways to win a game on your final possession, needing two free throws would for sure rank as the one Creighton fans dreaded the most heading into March Madness. They ranked 321st in D1 as a team in free throw percentage, lost two games this year directly attributable to missed three throws and a handful of others where shooting a better percentage would have made the difference.
So of course, with 16 seconds left in Saturday’s first round slugfest against UC Santa Barbara, that’s exactly where they found themselves. Down one, with the worst free throw shooter on a bad free throw shooting team at the line. You could forgive CU fans — myself included — if confidence wasn’t exactly sky high at that moment. As we watched, I muttered something about hoping they could tie it and get a stop to force overtime. Perusing Twitter, it was clear I wasn’t alone in feeling that way.
Two decades of March flops have a way of making you expect the worst when things start to go sideways. It’s a coping mechanism. My wife does not share the full emotional baggage of those gut punch losses, chided me for my negativity, and told me to send positive vibes out into the world instead of negative ones. My 11 month old son has never witnessed a Bluejay loss in the tourney, and as those dreaded free throws neared, he began clapping excitedly and yelled one of the six words in his vocabulary.
“Ball!”
Sure, he had no idea what he was watching. He might very well have been asking for another Cheerio, not two made free throws. But the point was well received from both of them. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results, right?
INDIANAPOLIS, IN – MARCH 20: Creighton takes on UC Santa Barbara in the first round of the 2021 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament held at Lucas Oil Stadium on March 20, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Justin Tafoya/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
And so Christian Bishop, he of the 57% shooting percentage from the line, prepared for the biggest shots of his career to this point. One to tie, two for the lead, in the crucible of the NCAA Tournament.
“I just took a step and smelled the roses, honestly, when I was out there. I knew I’d practiced it before. So I was ready to hit the shots,” Bishop said. “Yesterday when I was shooting free throws, I was like, why am I missing, why am I missing, and one of the coaches said, just tell yourself you’re going to make it, it’s a mental thing. So I just gave myself the confidence and I hit the shots.”
“We put him in situations in practice, at least when we had normal practice before we went into this bubble three weeks ago or whatever it was, where he’d have to make it at the end of practice for us to end practice or not have any conditioning or something like that,” Greg McDermott said. “And he spends a lot of time on his own in the gym getting work in…because you just never know. You never know when you’re going to be in a situation like that, especially a one-and-one where you’ve got to have that first one to give ourselves a chance. I’m really, really proud of him for the work he’s put in, and it takes a lot of moxie, I don’t care how good or bad a free-throw shooter you are, to step up in that situation, and I don’t think he hit the rim on either one. It’s really a credit to his preparation and the fact that he’s stayed with himself.”
That it was Bishop who calmly sank the game-winning free throws was fitting: He was Creighton’s player of the game even before he swished both of them, notching a double double of 15 points and 11 rebounds against a UCSB frontline that came into the game much-hyped and ended with no answer for the Jays’ big man. And he played a key defensive role against UC Santa Barbara star JaQuori McLaughlin — the Jays double-teamed him on the perimeter in ball-screen situations. They wanted him to be a facilitator. And it worked most of the night. The explosive McLaughlin had 13 points and seven assists, good numbers but far from even his average game.
But it nearly blew up in their face on UCSB’s final trip down the floor. With Bishop doubling McLaughlin on the perimeter to force someone else to beat them, big man Amadou Sow became that someone. He got free for an open lay-up. Gasp. It had ‘One Shining Moment’, buzzer beater, all-time tourney moment written all over it. The 12 seeded Gauchos getting their second ever tourney win on that play? It would run in highlight clips forever.
But that would-be game winner hit the back of the rim and bounced out. Shereef Mitchell grabbed the rebound, and CU escaped. Deep breath.
“I was looking to come off and shoot it but they were on me, double teaming me and Amadou was wide open,” McLaughlin said. “So I made the right pass right there, and he’s (normally) money in the paint.”
“It takes a little bit of luck sometimes,” Greg McDermott said.
They needed more than luck to hang around early in the game. The Jays fell behind 16-8 in the first six minutes, allowing UCSB to make seven of their first eight shots — another slow start in an NCAA Tournament game. In the first 10 minutes of Creighton’s last four NCAA losses, the equivalent of a 40 minute game, they had a combined 38 points; continuing that trend was an ominous sign.
But they scored just enough to hang around and not let UCSB get too far ahead, and then Denzel Mahoney caught fire. He scored five straight. He got tied up with a UCSB player fighting for a loose ball, had to be separated by an official, and then flexed angrily as if to say that the Jays were not backing down. The flex was directed more at his own teammates than the Gauchos. It was a sign to wake up and take over a game that was there for the taking. Message received.
Marcus Zegarowski scored eight points in the final two minutes of the first half, with two three-pointers and a driving layup off the backboard with one second left for a 34-30 lead. Though Mitch Ballock was struggling to score himself, he had a hand in both of Zegarowski’s threes. His unselfishness opened the door to a key stretch of the game.
In the second half, McDermott went with a rotation of six players: his starters plus Mitchell. He was going to ride with his best, for better or worse. And those players eventually built a 49-40 lead, threatening to run away for a rare drama-less March win. It wasn’t to be. An 11-0 UCSB run erased that lead and then some, putting them ahead 51-49. And it started with an unforced error, fouling a three-point shooter to give up three free throws, and leaving another shooter open for a three shortly thereafter.
It became a 21-5 run as the Jays went over eight minutes with just those five points, a stretch of ugly basketball at the worst possible time that threatened to end their season.
The Gauchos eventually extended their lead to four, 54-50, with four minutes left. Gut check time.
Mitch Ballock had been 0-for-6 on three pointers in the game, but made one when his team desperately needed it most. That triple made it 58-57 UCSB. Then Bishop stripped the ball away from McLaughlin, and later in the possession, threw down a reverse dunk in traffic for the lead. The showboating reverse dunk was the exact opposite of a “simple play”, as former coach Dana Altman would say, but that sort of swag is what makes this team so tough, too.
“I mean, I’d be envisioning stuff like that, so like the game I did a windmill earlier in the season, all day before I was like, I’m going to windmill, I’m going to windmill, and when I saw the opportunity, I’m like, this is my time so I took advantage of it,” Bishop said.
Then came a defensive stand reminiscent of the one at the end of the UConn game a week ago — three shots, two offensive rebounds, zero points. On the third miss, it was Ballock who finally cleared the board. And then Zegarowski stuck a long jumper from behind the free throw line for a 61-58 Bluejay lead.
The Gauchos had an answer. A layup and a pair of free throws from Sow gave UCSB the lead, 62-61, with 33 seconds left. Then Bishop grabbed the biggest offensive rebound of his life on a missed layup by Damien Jefferson, drew a foul, and the rest was history.
“We played a heck of a basketball team today,” UCSB head coach Joe Pasternack said. “We have so much respect for Creighton. They had a really, really good season. They’re very, very well-coached. They’re very difficult to play against, and I thought our guys competed as well as we can compete and really had a chance at the end to win it.”
Later in the day, 13 seeded Ohio took down defending national champion Virginia, setting up a very different potential path to the Sweet 16 for Creighton. Instead of the length and stifling defense of the Cavaliers, it’s the high octane offense of the Bobcats awaiting the Jays in the next round.
INDIANAPOLIS, IN – MARCH 20: Creighton plays UC Santa Barbara in the first round of the 2021 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament held at Lucas Oil Stadium on March 20, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Creighton defeated UC Santa Barbara 63-62. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Key Stats:
Christian Bishop carried the #Jays to the second round with 15 points, 11 rebounds, 2 blocks, and a steal in 32 exhausting minutes.
JaQuori McLaughlin had 5 points on his first two shots, then had only one shot attempt and one assist over the final 14:38 of the first half thanks to suffocating defense from Denzel Mahoney and Shereef Mitchell. He finished with 13 points and seven assists in 39 minutes, and took just nine shots.
It was another miserable March game from the arc, as the Jays were 7-of-25 on threes. But they had 18 assists on 26 made baskets, and scored 34 of their 63 points in the paint — making up for those long range struggles with great ball movement and scoring at the rim.
The victory was Greg McDermott’s 400th career Division I win (251 at Creighton, 59 at Iowa State, 90 at Northern Iowa), and what a memorable place to get it. McDermott also improved to 4-5 as Creighton’s head coach in the NCAA Tournament, breaking a tie with John “Red” McManus for most NCAA Tournament wins in program history.