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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 104, Central Arkansas 77

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[Box Score]

Key Stats: Creighton has their way on the glass, outrebounding UCA 45-28 overall and 18-6 on the offensive glass. Creighton scores 104 points despite shooting just 9-26 from three-point range (34%).

Favorite Moment: We won’t get too deep into the fact that Creighton is now wearing last spring’s NCAA Tournament uniforms as their default home set — what’s with the black and silver collar stripes? Neither of those are in Creighton’s color palette! They’re hideous! — but they did provide a moment of comic relief on opening night. Midway through the second half, James Milliken ran to the scorer’s table to check in, and tore off his warmup shirt en route. Unfortunately, he grabbed a bit more cloth than he needed to, and his jersey came off with the warmup. Not noticing, he nearly checked in that way until the referee closest to Milliken made him go back and retrieve the jersey.

Quick Recap: We knew Central Arkansas was bad before the game, as they’re essentially starting over from scratch this year, but holy crap — this team was a contender for worst D1 squad to play the Jays in the CLink Era,  right down there with some of those Arkansas Pine Bluff squads that were mockingly (endearingly?) referred to as Arkansas Cream Puff. They have ten new players, and it showed as they didn’t play cohesively on defense, had no real plan on offense, and outside of Jordan Howard and Boo Milligan, had no real scoring threats. It was 14-1 six minutes into the game before they scored a field goal; it was 21-3 before they got another one a minute later; it was 39-13 at the under-eight timeout, at which point the competitive portion of the game ceased at least as far as the fans were concerned. Coming out of that timeout, the players might have bought into that theory, too — they let up their intensity on defense, and UCA rattled off a 21-15 “run” to close the half to “cut” the lead to 55-34.

Some great things happened in that first half as the Jays built their commanding lead. Rick Kreklow scored 11 points on 2-3 shooting, and got to the line three times, sinking 5-6 free throws. He also chipped in four rebounds — two offensive — and two assists. Backup guards Isaiah Zierden and James Milliken had solid offensive halves, with Zierden scoring 13 points thanks to making three of four 3-pointers, and Milliken scoring 11 points on 2-5 shooting from three-point range. And the Jays looked much more in sync than they did a week prior in the exhibition, on both sides of the ball.

In the second half, the Jays started much as they did the first stanza, ripping off a 25-8 run over the first nine minutes to deliver the knock-out blow. Will Artino was especially terrific, scoring 10 points with 8 rebounds — five of them offensive! — in just seven minutes of second half action. Those are ridiculous numbers, even against UCA. Up 80-42 with 11 minutes left, the rest of the game was played by a mix of bench players and rotation guys, as Austin Chatman, Devin Brooks and Artino took a seat early.

Leon Gilmore III saw his first game action, and while he didn’t make a field goal, he had a couple of nice rebounds and got in the scoring column with two free throws. Geoffrey Groselle showed a nifty move or two around the basket, and scored seven points. And walk-on Tyler Clement got nine minutes of action and drew a huge cheer when he drained a three-pointer. It was a heckuva show for the 18,160 fans in attendance, as the largest opening night crowd in Creighton history saw that the post-Doug McDermott Era doesn’t look much different than before, at least for one night.

Quotables:

“It’s always good to get the season off to a start with a victory. I thought we did some really good things at times. The game got lopsided early and we couldn’t quite put them away in the first half, but I thought the starters did a good job and the first guys off the bench. The first 15 or 16 possessions in the second half they only scored three times and we were able to create some separation.” -Coach Greg McDermott

“I loved the way we started the game defensively and I didn’t like the way we finished the half defensively. I think they scored 13 points in the first 22 possessions and then 21 points in the last 13 or 14 possessions, and we can’t have stretches like that defensively. We have to be able to put a team away when we get them down.” -Coach Greg McDermott

“Will has been there and he’s done it. My expectation is that he does it all the time, and that’s where we have to get. I think we’re moving in that direction. We’ll see if we can continue to play all three [centers]. Obviously Will played pretty well so we went with him a little longer tonight because he was productive in his minutes.” -Coach Greg McDermott

“Chicago State’s out in Tempe tonight playing Arizona State, I think they were down 12 at half 40-28 they told me as I was walking back here, so we’re going to play a better basketball team on Sunday. Chicago State has guys that have been together longer and obviously their coaching staff is the same as it was a year ago. They are going to press some, they’re going to trap some. We’ve got a short turnaround, but we worked a little bit on it in practice last week. We have to have a short, spirited workout tomorrow in preparation for Sunday and in less than 40 hours or so we’re going to tee it up again. Guys want to play games, and coaches would like to have more time to prepare for games. But the reality of it is it’s here and for a while here it’s going to be scouting report to scouting report, because we’re not going to have a lot of time to work on ourselves because of all the games we’re going to play in the next couple of weeks.” -Coach Greg McDermott

“I think it’s something that as we go forward here that we’re going to continue to really focus is that aspect of team defense. Taking care of your guy while looking after the guy next to you. I think it’s something that can really help us going forward to get to the next level as a team. It’s something we really have to stay focused on in practice and really work on our communication and keep locking teams up and do better than we’re doing right now.” -Rick Kreklow

“We have a few guys that came off the bench last year and played it, and the starters set the tone for us in the past. We’d feed off their energy that they created when we’d go in the game. I know that it’s important to set the tone as a starter now and that’s something we not necessarily talked about, but something that guys like me and Devin and Avery when he’s back, we know how it is to come off the bench and feed off their energy.” -Will Artino

And Now, Here’s What You Had to Say:

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