Subscribe to our Newsletter

Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 65, Nebraska 55

By
0
Share

[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton commits 10 turnovers in the first half, and just two in the second half. CU’s bench scores 30 points — including a 24-2 edge in the second half. Nebraska blanks CU 10-0 in on second chance points in the first half, but CU returns the favor 9-4 in the second half. And my favorite stat of the night: after Nebraska took their biggest lead, 24-14, Creighton outscored them 51-31 the rest of the way.

Favorite Moment:

It’s always a great moment when, as the visiting team, you can win by enough points to clear the arena out before the game is over. Especially in a rivalry game like this. But my favorite moment was a play in two acts. Act I: with two minutes to play, Nebraska’s Terran Petteway nailed a three-pointer to cut the Bluejay lead to 58-53. With the crowd going crazy, Austin Chatman calmly brought the ball up court, dribbled into an open space about 15 feet out, and nonchalantly sank a jumper. It quieted the crowd, it clinched the win, and it sent those aforementioned fans for the exit.

But it was the reaction from freshman Leon Gilmore III on the bench that made this truly memorable. In Act II, as you can see in this clip that someone grabbed and posted to YouTube, check out his moves — first there’s the “Running Man”, and then he falls over in a combo of laughter-slash-excitement, with his arms flailing wildly. SO FUNNY.

That was the one that stuck out, but the bench was a powerful cheerleading and motivational force the entire night, as Coach Mac pointed out on Twitter:

Recap:

After the game, Nebraska coach Tim Miles said a curious thing. “I felt like we could beat them with what we run. I was wrong. He (McDermott) was right. His game plan was better than my game plan.” In one concise statement, he was more revealing than any long explanation could have been. He thought they could beat Creighton straight-up — that they didn’t need to alter their gameplan or scheme for the Jays. He thought they could come in and win, because they were better, because of everything Creighton doesn’t have anymore, because of the home crowd and because of the Huskers near-invincability at the Bank.

He was wrong. This Creighton team might not have Doug McDermott and his cohorts, but they have guts, they play defense, and mostly, they have Austin Chatman. Tim Miles and his team found that out on Sunday night, much to their chagrin, and with about 90 seconds left in the game, many Husker fans headed for the exits — having lost 13 of the last 16 games to the Jays, they knew what it looked like to see the Jays congratulate each other on a victory on the Huskers’ home court, and they didn’t care to witness it again. Not this year, when they’d convinced themselves so assuredly that the outcome would be different. That it ended with yet another double-digit victory for the Bluejays had to sting particularly hard.

Especially because for the first 15 minutes of the game, Nebraska appeared to be in control. They had led wire-to-wire at that point, and after a jumper from David Rivers, they took a 24-14 lead. The crowd was amped up, ready to explode after the next Husker basket, and the Bluejays were on the ropes. To that point, the Jays had made just four baskets in 15 minutes, their offensive struggles continuing, and Terran Petteway was red-hot — the Husker All-American scored 11 of his team’s first 15 points.

This was what so many had feared: CU was about to be buried under an avalanche of Husker points and crowd noise. With the pressure to stem the tide building on the next possession, Will Artino turned it over, and as Terran Petteway led the fastbreak, the crowd noise reached a fevered pitch. This was the moment. A basket might have marked the point of no return. Petteway jacked up a quick, ill-advised three before his rebounders were in position, and it missed. Artino atoned for his turnover by corralling the missed shot, and fed it to Austin Chatman, who drained a jumper at the other end.

A series of defensive stops and clutch buckets followed — first Devin Brooks drove the lane and kicked it out to Rick Kreklow in the corner for a three, then Brooks did the same on the next possession, this time finding Chatman in the same corner; he pump-faked and got himself open enough to drain a jumper. When Avery Dingman drained a three from the corner two possessions later, it capped a 10-0 run that would both even the score and take the wind out of Nebraska’s sails.

Sure, the Huskers re-took the lead at the half on a long two from Petteway, but even with a 28-27 advantage there was a nagging sense of a missed opportunity — they had the chance to put Creighton away, didn’t do it, and now they had a game on their hands.

Meanwhile, Greg McDermott’s game plan was working perfectly. He decided to clog up the paint to cut off driving lanes and force the Huskers to settle for jump shots, and to blanket Shavon Shields with an array of defenders in an attempt to make his impact on the game as minimal as possible. They were content to live with Petteway scoring whatever he scored, gambling that without his preferred scoring method of driving to the rack, he wouldn’t be able to single-handedly beat them on a diet of jump shots. It was brilliant, it was correct, and it worked. Shields averaged 20.0 points coming in, and was held scoreless in the first half; Petteway had 14 first-half points, but 7 of his 10 field-goal attempts were three-pointers, statistically a much lower percentage shot for him.

In the second half, Nebraska built a lead as large as five points on three separate occasions, but was never able to pull away. The last of those leads was vanquished at the 14:06 mark by back-to-back threes from Chatman and Kreklow; Nebraska briefly re-took the lead, 39-37, on their own three-pointer from Benny Parker. It would be short-lived. 20 seconds later, Will Artino quieted the crowd with a jumper to tie it, and after a quick shot by Petteway misfired, Isaiah Zierden swished home a three from in front of the Creighton bench that gave them a 42-39 lead. They would not trail again.

Nebraska fought valiantly, keeping it a two-possession game until late in the game, but down the stretch it was the visiting Bluejays who made winning plays. With 2:12 to play, Petteway hit a three to make it 56-53, but the Jays would outscore them 9-2 to close out the win. First Chatman answered with a jumper to push the lead back out to five (and led to the “Running Man” from Leon Gilmore), then Will Artino made up for an earlier miss on a gimme layup by making a tougher one, and then they made 5-6 free throws in the final 90 seconds to seal it.

While it was exciting to see shots fall, especially from guys like Kreklow and Dingman who had been struggling, it was the defensive effort by the Jays that was the story of this game. After the excellent first-half performance defensively, they ratcheted things up even further in the second. They held Nebraska to 27 points, and forced Petteway to continue to settle for jump shots by taking away his driving lanes. They weren’t able to shut out Shields as they had in the first half, but they held him to just six shot attempts and seven points, and essentially made him a non-factor. The defensive gameplan by the coaches, and the execution by the players, was nearly flawless.

Quotables:

“What’s been tough has been trying to find my place within the team. Where your looks will come from, when you’re expected to shoot, and that’s been the toughest part — I’ve been over thinking it by trying to do the right thing. To a point, that’s good, but you can’t do too much of that. Tonight, I got a good open look in the corner, and I saw the ball go through the hoop for the first time in what seems like a long time. It felt good, and it got me going. It had been a struggle. The past couple of game, I’d maybe only had a couple of good looks. It was a good night tonight, just in the way we moved the ball and got good open looks — not just for myself but for everybody on the team — and we shot the ball a lot better than we have from three.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“The coaches are really patient with me, and that’s got to be frustrating for them. To have a staff that’s trying to get me along as quick as possible is great. I’m trying to learn two positions, and there’s a lot of different stuff we do for every game, with new plays that we have to learn. I’d be lying if I said it was easy, and I could be doing better than I have been, but it was nice tonight to finally see everything flow a little bit better to where I finally felt like I was getting in the right spots.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“We have a great luxury because we have Toby, who’s been shooting the heck out of the ball all season, and doing a great job of passing the ball out of that ‘4’ spot, but even the best shooters in the world don’t shoot well every night. He couldn’t get his rhythm tonight, but what’s so nice is that just happened to be on a night when Avery and I shot better. We’d both been struggling, so it was good to have both of us get good, open looks and have the ball go through the net. On defense, we’ve been playing a lot of help-side, we really help each other out — that’s a big principle for us defensively — and to do that as well as we did tonight, when we struggled so much against Tulsa doing the same thing, it’s good to see that kind of improvement in that short a period of time. That’s important, because you’re going to have games throughout the year where you just don’t get the job done, where you don’t execute the scout plan, and where you don’t do what you need to do to win a game. Against Tulsa, we tripped up. We didn’t do what we needed to do. What was nice was to kind of be able to forget about that. We were able to come into this environment, where not a lot of people have walked out of this building with a win, and to execute the game plan and come out with a win.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“Thursday’s practice was tough, but we needed it. That was one of those deals where physically, you kind of know what you’re getting into after a game like we had at Tulsa. Everyone was kind of walking in a half-step slow into the locker room (laughs), but what’s so good about this team is that everyone’s warming up and stretching and kind of dreading what’s to come, but once we started practice, everyone locked in and understood what needed to be done. We knew we had a long way to go to be able to compete with a team like Nebraska at their place, and everyone bought into the process that needed to be followed if we were going to come in here and win. We’ve got a lot of upperclassmen who’ve been here for four or five years, and they picked everyone up, got us through it, and helped the other guys understand that it won’t be easy — and it wasn’t easy — but we’ll get through it. They picked up the guys who felt like they’d reached their limit, and got them to push to another level to be a better player than they thought they could be.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“This rivalry reminds me of Mizzou-Kansas. I remember, my freshman year I made the mistake of walking out by myself for warmups, and I’m telling you I’ve never been booed so hard my entire life (laughs). I was 18, I was barely shaving, and that was a rough experience (laughs). This place is wild, so it’s a good environment to come into and steal a win.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“It’s one of those deals where, when you get down, there’s no such thing as a ten-point shot. You wish there was, but there isn’t, so you have to chip away. You have to string together defensive stops. There was a point there where we were finally clicking on defense, after we let Petteway get hot in the first few minutes, and we were finally able to put that fire out a little bit while at the same time getting good looks for ourselves. We started putting defensive stops together with making shots, and that’s how you cut into a big lead.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“We did a much better job taking care of the basketball in the second half. Initially, we struggled with the pressure. We’d drive into the middle of the lane, and the officials — they were really letting us play. Some games, those would be fouls but in this one it wasn’t. We were much more prepared for that in the second half. We understood that if you drove in there, don’t expect a whistle for contact — kick it out and find open shooters. That was our biggest adjustment from the first to the second half.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“I couldn’t be more proud of my seniors, Avery and Austin and Will, to have four wins on their resume against our in-state rival, especially as good as they’ve been the last two years. To come in here, to a tough environment, and weather the storm when they got up ten. I’m really, really proud of my team. They played some really good basketball tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Well, Petteway is going to shoot 20 shots no matter what you do. So you want to make those shots as tough as possible. I thought we were a little late, in the first half in particular, on getting to some of those and he had a little more rhythm than we’d have liked him to have. And we wanted to make Shields’ life tough, we wanted to plug up the lane and not let him in there, we didn’t want to give him rhythm threes, and we wanted to keep it away from his right hand. Our guys executed great — when to switch, when not to switch, we changed up our ball-screen defense depending on whether Pitchford or one of the other big guys had it — so there were a lot to remember and a lot to execute. We had a few breakdowns but for the most part, we executed it pretty well. Had we rebounded the first half, when they had a few long offensive rebounds where we didn’t close out on the ball, we had a chance to hold them to about 20 points if we’d done a better job on the boards. But I was thrilled to be back in it at half, and our execution in the second half on both ends was really, really good.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We’re automatically better with Avery back in the lineup defensively, without question. And he picked some spots offensively tonight, where he drove into the lane and made some things happen, and he hit some rhythm threes, which is good to see. Defensively, it’s not easy to guard Petteway. Avery played 29 minutes, and that’s asking a lot because you’re involved in the action every single possession.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Toby had some good looks in the first half, and just didn’t knock them down. I ran a play for him to start the second half, and he missed it. And then he missed another one about a minute later, but then Ricky picked him up and made one. You’re going to have nights like that, especially when you’re a freshman, and it’s good to know that you’ve got somebody else that has your back when you’re not playing particularly well. It’s not that Toby played poorly, he just didn’t make shots. He had open shots, but he missed them. That’s what Nebraska was giving us. They were plugging up the lane and taking our roll guy away as he went to the rim, and so we were going to make the extra pass to get an open three in the corner. Toby had good looks, he just missed them. That’s going to happen sometimes. But as I told Ricky after the game, it’s refreshing to see him smile. I’ve asked a lot of him, playing a couple of different positions, and with his role totally changing when Avery went down with the ankle injury. He’s settled down now coming off the bench, and he was good tonight. I thought his pace was great, I thought he picked his spots to shoot. I’m really, really proud of both of those guys.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“On Shields, we told our guys not to give him any rhythm threes, and then really plug up his right hand. When he turns to go right, have somebody there. We told our guys, we need to be holding hands. Literally, the guy guarding the ball and the guy in the gap, you have to be holding hands. As a result, you give up a few shots to guys like David Rivers and Benny Parker from 15-17 feet, but we were willing to live with that.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Tonight, the key was Austin Chatman. It was 24-14, we were coming in transition, and I was debating whether or not to call a timeout. The crowd was into it, but I thought we had a little spacing and maybe Austin could get to the rim and get a layup. So I let them go. The play of the game was, they cut it to three with two minutes or whatever it was left, and Austin comes down and gets a ballscreen switch and pulls up with a 15-footer. I’ve always been a guy that likes to let my team play. I don’t like to take timeouts, I don’t like to let the defense set up, I don’t like to let the crowd get louder. Sometimes on defense I’d love to have them be able to come over and talk about exactly what changes we want to make, but I want our guys to play because I trust them. Obviously, Austin is a big-time player. He’s been a part of our success in the past and his game tonight was the best game of his career.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“This win is good because it means so much to our fans. It gives them another year at the coffee shops and at work to brag. That’s what it’s good for…and for us to come into this environment, where they’ve lost once in two years, it’s really a feather in the cap for our guys. It wasn’t like the crowd wasn’t into the game. We had to withstand some of that fury, and get ourselves back into the game, so it’s a great win for us. We won with class, we won the way that we want to win, we kept our mouths shut and just played the game, and that’s what my expectation is of our guys. This is one of the things we needed to check off of our list for this group. We needed to go on the road, in a tough environment, and find a way to get a win. There isn’t a more emotional game that we’ll play in all year. So for our guys to do what they did tonight, I’m extremely proud of them.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

And Now, Here’s What You Had to Say:

0
Share
Newsletter
Never Miss a Story

Sign up for WBR's email newsletter, and get the best
Bluejay coverage delivered to your inbox FREE.