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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 105, North Texas 82

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton scored on 51 of their 81 possessions despite shooting 4-17 from three-point range, thanks to a whopping 56 points in the paint. They scored 105 points (!) with just 12 of them coming via the three point shot (!!). That’s the fewest number of three-pointers made in a game that the Jays topped 100 points in at least 21 years (that’s how far the archived stats go back on GoCreighton.com). To score that many without raining threes would have been unfathomable last year, or really any of the last several years. It’s been clear for a while that this is no longer a live-by-the-three, die-by-the-three team, at least not every night, and that’s the latest proof.

The Jays went 29-40 from the free throw line, their most attempts in any game since 2011 when they attempted 43 against Davidson in the CBI, and their most made free throws since they had 36 in that same game. They were an excellent 24-29 from the line in the first half when the game was being decided, bolstered by Geoff Groselle going 9-10 and Ronnie Harrell going 6-8 in the half.

Also, the Jays have now won 23 straight games when scoring 100 points or more since a 1977 loss to…duh duh duh!…North Texas.

Standout Performance:

There were lots of standouts on a night when the Jays scored 105 points. Cole Huff had 13 points on 5-6 shooting with four rebounds in just 15 minutes. Zach Hanson was a perfect 6-6 from the floor with three blocks and three boards in 14 minutes. Maurice Watson had 16 points with seven assists and no turnovers. Most other nights, one of those three would be worthy of call-out.

But not on this night.

Geoff Groselle had a career-high 27 points, going 8-9 from the field and 11-14 from the line. Along the way he outscored his entire freshman and sophomore SEASONS in one game; the big fella had nine points as a frosh, and 23 as a sophomore. He’s scored 15 or more points in six of the last eight games, and is now shooting a robust 70.5% from the field (55-78) to lead the Big East Conference. For comparison, Gregory Echenique, the Jays’ last all-conference caliber center, made just 65% of his shots in his best season and (anecdotally) most of his shot attempts were dunks! Obviously there’s a lot of basketball yet to be played, and the competition (and the defense) will get better from here, but 70% through 12 games is absurd.

And then there’s Ronnie Harrell. Holy crap, Ronnie Harrell. Pressed into heavy minutes with Toby Hegner stuck riding a stationary bike in the tunnel all night due to his injured ankle, the redshirt freshman said “Hello!” with a double-double of 14 points and 11 rebounds, while also contributing five assists, no turnovers, and two steals with stellar defense to boot. The rebounds were aggressive, featuring him going up in traffic to snare the ball in between multiple defenders, diving on the floor for loose balls, and simply just wanting the ball more than the guys he was playing against. And here’s the crazy part about the points: he was 3-9 from the floor, so he could conceivably have scored even more than he did. The last freshman to have a double-double for the Jays was some guy named McDermott (who had 31 points and 10 boards in that crazy Davidson game in the CBI that we keep mentioning today), but let’s not get carried away here. Harrell will need to prove those feats are repeatable against bigger, more physical players in the Big East, but even half of what he did Monday night would be amazing for a freshman.

Geoff Groselle drives to the rim for two of his career-high 27 points. (Photo by Brad Williams / WBR)

Geoff Groselle drives to the rim for two of his career-high 27 points. (Photo by Brad Williams / WBR)

Recap & Analysis:

Four minutes into the game, Creighton led 15-6, with Groselle equalling the Mean Green’s offensive output by himself. The opponents from North Texas would briefly trim that lead to eight points on one occasion, but for all intents and purposes, that initial surge allowed the Jays to keep them at arms’ length the rest of the evening. It was an important start, given what happened last December in Denton against this team.

There was offense aplenty — the Bluejays led 21-9 after just 12 possessions, reached 30 points with 8:46 left in the first half, 40 with 6:03 left in the half, and 50 points with just over two minutes to go in the half before taking a 54-39 lead to the locker room. Along the way Groselle scored 15 points thanks in large part to going 9-10 from the line, and Harrell scored eight points with six boards. As a team, they had nearly as many points from the line (24) as they did from the floor (30), in a half that took nearly an hour of actual time to play due to the large number of whistles.

They kept their foot on the gas after halftime, scoring on their first six possessions to push the lead to 65-45 with 16:32 to play. Groselle added 12 more points in the half, going a perfect 5-5 from the field, while Zach Hanson went a perfect 4-4 from the floor to add nine points in a dominating half for the Bluejay centers.

Defensively, they gave up 82 points, which is the fifth time in 12 games they’ve allowed a team to score 78 or more on them. It was also the seventh time they’ve allowed a team to shoot better than 45% from the floor on them. That’s concerning heading into Big East play, but this is not a team built to win with defense. They’re built to outscore you. For better or worse, that’s the way it is. To that end, the offense is much, much better than it was a year ago — they topped 90 points for the sixth time this year after doing it twice all of last year, and did it without needing to make a ton of three-pointers. We’ll see how things go once conference play starts, but getting 20 points from your starting center on high-percentage shots at the rim is a good place to start if your hope is to outscore people.

They Said It:

“Offensively we did some good things, and we took what the defense gave us. We didn’t shoot it good tonight, and it’s probably the first game all season where we Z, James, and Tazz all had rough shooting nights. And yet we still scored 105 points. We understood we had an advantage inside, and I thought Zach and Geoff really worked hard on the glass and to get angles, so their offense was really efficient.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Our defense was not good enough. It’s not consistent enough. It’s what we’ll address when they get back Christmas night, because if we want to do the things in the Big East that we’d like to do, we have to have some improvement in that area. More consistency is what we need. It’s just frustrating that it’s happening at times, it’s just not happening all the time. The Oklahoma game is a great example. First 11 minutes of the second half, they score 15 points, and that’s one of the elite offensive teams in the country. So we’re capable. But we just need everybody on the same page every possession. Sometimes when you’re scoring at such a high rate that fast, you get into trading baskets. I feel like we did that at times tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“There’s no question that Geoff is more confident. He’s stepping up and making free throws, his angles are good — he made a couple of plays off the dribble tonight which were really good — and he’s doing what you want a fifth-year senior to do. He’s playing with confidence, he’s leading the team, he’s demanding the ball inside. And, you know, throwing it in there to him and Zach, besides scoring easy baskets, it also racks the fouls up, and it gets you to the free throw line. There was a big free throw discrepancy in the first half, and that was a big reason we had the lead.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I’m happy to get the win. The game before Christmas always scares me. These guys can’t wait to get out of here and go home to see their families, and that’s understandable. But you have to play a game first, and we did what we had to do tonight. We got the win, now they can get out of here.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Teams being able to score on us off the dribble concerns me. Part of the reason is, on one possession the guard doesn’t do his job, the next possession the big in the ball-screen doesn’t do his job but the guard does, and then the next possession both of them do their job but the guy protecting the roll doesn’t do his job, he doesn’t get inside and take the big away. So we need that to function correctly and consistently. We’ll continue to work at it, and I think we’ll get better. We got caught out there with that small lineup a bit, with Z, James, and Mo — it’s our most experienced lineup, yet it’s pretty small. There are times where they’re shooting two-point shots over top of us that are relatively challenged, but the guy shooting is 6’4″ and they’re 6’1″ so there’s not much you can do about it. Those are going to happen, so we just have to clean up the ones that we can stop.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I really felt like a lot of the missed three-point shots Mo created. If we made three-pointers tonight he could have had 13 or 14 assists to go along with his 16 points. He’s getting a little bit better. He has a little better understanding of where his shots are going to come from, and where the reads are. I think he has 31 turnovers on the year, and if I’m not mistaken 21 or 22 of those came in the first five games. His ratio in the last seven games is now 47 to 12. He’s going to make some mistakes because we need him to take chances, but he’s learning not to take every chance. I talked to him tonight, we ran a play to get two layups and the third time we ran the play he shot a three. I said to him in the timeout, ‘I know you’re open, but until they stop the layup, we need to take the layup.’ That’s what we need to do. As we run those plays he gets a better understanding of what we’re doing, but he’s creative finishing at the rim, and he had that play tonight where he changed hands in transition — those aren’t easy plays but he makes them look easy. He’s moving the right direction. His focus, his leadership has been good. He’s really important to us on a lot of levels.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Ronnie played well, and we needed it. Cole was in the early foul trouble, and while I liked the way he played early, he got a couple of fouls guarding the dribble. We need guys to come off the bench when we’re in trouble and perform. Ronnie’s a better shooter than he shot tonight, but he does need to become better at that because he’s going to have opportunities. The reality of it is, we had Cole, Toby, and Martin at the four. Ronnie has never had any minutes at the four until the injuries to Toby and to Martin. So besides missing the three weeks he missed with his foot, he missed all of those reps defensively, he missed all of the stuff we put in offensively, he’s got a boot on, he can’t do anything even at walk-through speed, and now he comes back and we throw him in a different position where he has no idea. So he’s surviving out there, really. Obviously we have to simplify things quite a bit when he’s at that position because he’s not ready for it, but tonight he was active, he went after it, he rebounded, and his length defensively was a factor.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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