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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 77, St. John’s 74

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton gets 44 of their 77 points from the bench, with 38 coming from James Milliken and Toby Hegner. CU shoots 9-18 from three-point range in the first half, and 16-18 from the free throw line in the second half.

Favorite Moment:

The clock reading all zeroes and Creighton having more points than their opponent. Oh, that’s a cop-out? How about James Milliken’s three-pointer with 1:11 to play, increasing CU’s lead from 68-67 to 71-67? It registered 107 on the decibel meter (I know this because it was the loudest moment of the night, and that was the announced “high” on the meter after the game) and felt like a release after a month of disappointment — finally, a big shot and one of our guys hits it! Now let’s go finish it! D’Angelo Harrison would have something to say about that, of course.

Recap & Analysis:

Anyone else think D’Angelo Harrison’s shot was going in at the buzzer to tie the game? I did. Everyone around me did, too. That’s the way Creighton’s season has gone. They’ve had no luck, no fortuitous bounces, and no breaks for five weeks. They’ve played hard, had opportunities to win three of their eight Big East losses in the final minute, and come up empty-handed every time. Of course his shot was going to go in. He’d already made one ridiculous, no-business-going-in circus shot moments earlier, after all. This game was going overtime, where Bluejay fans’ hearts would be ripped out, Temple Of Doom style, and then shown to them still beating as St. John’s pulled away for a win. You hated to think that way, but after five weeks of losses, it’s hard to stop fatalistic thoughts from creeping into your mind.

Sure enough, on the final inbounds pass, Harrison broke free from Austin Chatman, got a clean look from 40 feet, and launched a shot that was dead-on. It was going in.

And then it didn’t.

It hit the rim, bounced away harmlessly, and for the first time since December 19, the Bluejay Victory Flag stormed onto the court celebrating a win to the joyous sound of the “White and the Blue.” Finally, the 2014-15 Creighton Bluejays caught a break, and could celebrate a victory. Finally, they got their first Big East victory of the season.

The decision to start the four scholarship seniors plus Rick Kreklow — the fifth-year senior transfer — and give them the responsibility of ending the run of slow starts didn’t yield immediate results, at least not offensively. They scored just two points in the game’s first four minutes. But defensively, they held St. John’s to just two points of their own, and gave their offense time to get untracked without the urgent need to put up points because the opponent was scoring at will.

A back-and-forth game commenced, and with 5:16 to play in the first half, Creighton clung to a 20-19 lead. They unleashed a 12-3 run, which included back-to-back three pointers from Toby Hegner and a third from Avery Dingman, to build a 32-22 lead less than three minutes later. St. John’s scored four straight to answer, but a three-pointer by James Milliken and free throws from Kreklow gave CU a double-digit halftime lead.

The lead wouldn’t last long. Jamal Branch, taking advantage of the Triangle-And-Two that the Bluejays were employing to slow down Harrison and Phil Greene IV, scored seven straight points as part of a 9-0 Red Storm run in the first 2:20 of the second half. A minute later, Sir’Dominic Pointer hit the second of two consecutive jumpers, and it was 40-39 St. John’s. Just like that, the double-digit lead had evaporated before the first media timeout.

It would be the first of 10 lead changes in the second half, with neither team able to pull away, and neither team allowing their opponent to pull away either. It all set up the nerve-wracking final four minutes, when Creighton finally took the lead for good, but saw St. John’s hit a shot to pull within one point FIVE separate times. While it was the seniors who started and were tasked with getting the game off to a better start, it was the newcomers who brought it home. From the 62-62 tie with 3:59 to play until the final horn, 13 of the 15 Bluejay points were scored by newcomers — nine from Milliken on a pair of clutch three-pointers and four from Toby Hegner on four pressure-packed free throws in the final seconds.

Quotables:

“It’s amazing. We obviously don’t want to hang our hats on it, though, because we want to keep building on this. But it feels good to finally get one under our belt. This is motivation for us.” -Austin Chatman on 1620AM Postgame

“I grew up playing against D’Angelo (Harrison) a lot, and we knew each other pretty well. We were pretty much talking to each other the whole game. I told him this was going to be a tough game for him, and he had to work for it. He didn’t get anything too easily. That was a tough three he hit there at the end — shooters make shots, and hats off to him for making that one, wow.” -Austin Chatman on 1620AM Postgame

“I think the key for the team was kind of me being aggressive. I think when guys see me being aggressive, they get that look in their eyes and they start being more aggressive too. They start taking open shots and forcing the issue a little bit more. That was the key for me, just getting back to that aggressiveness.” -Austin Chatman on 1620AM Postgame

“When St. John’s erased the halftime lead so quick, we didn’t panic because we’ve been in those situations and we’ve been in a lot of close games. We really just didn’t want to let it slip through our fingers again. We just had to keep the guys’ heads in the moment, and move on to the next play — people by nature like to look back at what they did wrong, so we just had to keep everyone moving forward.” -Austin Chatman on 1620AM Postgame

“Oh, man, Toby was big. He hit shots for the first time in a while (laughs). It was good to see that though. He came off the bench for the first time, and I think he handled it well. He was mentally prepared.” -Austin Chatman on 1620AM Postgame

“It feels awesome to finally have a game where we…I was going to be sick if D’Angelo hit that prayer from 40 feet after he hit that other prayer over there on the right wing where he just kind of chucked it at the rim. We finally had a shot go our way! (laughs)” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“Well, you know, basketball is a game with a lot of runs. You’re going to have some of your own, and you’re going to give up some. It was good that, even though I had a turnover on, I think it was our first offensive possession, and then they had a run-out. They scored on a couple of other easy buckets. It was good that we didn’t let that deflate the way we were playing, because we were playing well. I think we had 10 turnovers, which is great. Wisconsin leads the nation and I think they’re a little above 8, so taking care of the ball like that against a team like St. John’s is big-time for us. It really kind of helped us keep them from getting a lot more shots at the bucket and you see how it ended up, we finally pulled one out. The ones we had, a lot of them were when we were trying to make skip-passes on the backside, but they were kind of trying to get us to throw those. We didn’t get them up enough, and they got their hands on them. They’re long and athletic, and that’s what they’re trying to do. For the most part, we didn’t do a whole lot of that. 10 turnovers against a team like St. John’s is pretty good.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“Toby was shooting really well today, getting in rhythm, getting open looks, and knocking them down. I think overall, everybody shot pretty well from three for the most part. We got good looks at the bucket and knocked them down. James had two huge ones late from the corner in front of the bench, I mean, those were big-time shots. And then we had Toby and Chat finish the game with those free throws. We had guys making plays that needed to be made.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“We were getting aggressive looks, taking it to the rim and being strong with it. Zach had a couple of big boy finishes tonight, and at big times of the game. And we had a lot of other guys making good plays, kicking it out to shooters on the perimeter and that’s what we need to do more of. I think a lot of the reason we’re not shooting as good percentage-wise is that we’re not getting many of those kick-out looks, those inside-out looks. I think a big reason we hit them tonight is that we got those kind of looks. And that comes from being aggressive and taking it at the rim.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“We’ve gotten off to so many slow starts, and starting five seniors tonight put that responsibility on the guys who’ve been around successful teams. It put the responsibility to get off to good start on us. We’ve dug ourselves holes against good teams that we couldn’t climb out of. Tonight, defensively, I thought we did a good job in the first half doing that. We were making them take tough shots, we were limiting their offensive rebounds, it was a good job defensively to keep them from getting into a good rhythm and it kept them from getting started.” -Rick Kreklow on 1620AM Postgame

“You know, we’ve had some crazy bounces go against us so it was good to see one bounce off the rim. And there were a couple there in the last minute, minute and a half that went against us, like Harrison’s whirling-dervish three. Or when Devin made a great steal and he does what he should do, he throws it to a player streaking toward our basket, and Avery makes an unbelievable hustle play to run that thing down but it ends up in their hands and they make a three in transition. It’s like, ‘You have got to be kidding me.’ I’m just happy for our guys. The smile on their faces, the celebration in the locker room, is great.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“This is hard on everybody when you have a start like we’ve had in league play. It’s hard on our fans, it’s certainly hard on our staff as we continue to try to find ways to put these guys in position to be successful, and it’s harder on our players than anybody else. They have so much pride in this program. And to their credit, they’ve stuck with it. As I told them in the locker room, I think that’s why we had a great crowd here tonight. You can go up and down the Top 20 attendance list, and I don’t think there’s another place in the country where if a team starts 0-8 and they’re playing at 8:00 on a Wednesday night they’d still have a crowd like this. The ‘Dancing Grandma’ and the ‘Hoosiers’ and all of that going on during the timeout, and then D’Angelo Harrison — an 80% free throw shooter — misses the front end of a one-and-one because our crowd is deafening. They impacted this game. We so appreciate them. They’ve stuck with us through some tough times, and as I’ve said all along, I know this group will keep fighting. They will. I just appreciate everybody that was here to support us tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We worked a little bit this week with Toby at the 5. We thought maybe we could get him in some tough situations with Obekpa guarding him. And to Toby’s credit, it only looks good if the shots go in. Toby stepped up and made some huge baskets. And then for a freshman to step to the free-throw line in that situation and knock down all four free throws without even having one hit the rim is a real credit to him.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought our seniors got us off to a great start defensively. Obviously, we didn’t score much, and I have to evaluate that — did we have good shots, were the right guys shooting it, was it too quick, did we make the extra pass. James and Toby have started the last several games, but they didn’t pout about it, they responded off the bench, and had big nights for us.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Well, St. John’s is so long on that backside. A lot of our turnovers were skip passes where it looks like an opening is there, but you’ve got so much length and athletic ability on that backside that they picked a few of them off. The message to our guys was, you have to go at Obekpa and make him commit to us, then think about spraying it. Because if you just pass it around the perimeter, and I thought we did some of that early in the game, there wasn’t much movement, there wasn’t much attacking, then you won’t get as good of a shot. Our guys were aggressive. Devin’s stat line, he didn’t have a field goal but he put some pressure on the defense with his drives, and he was part of the reason we got into the bonus the second half because he got in the teeth of their zone, and attacked some of those closeouts. It was a great team win, and I’m really, really, really proud of my team.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We played a Triangle-And-Two for probably 70% of the game. It was a little bit different, we didn’t deny Green and Harrison, we just played them man-to-man and zoned up the other three guys so that there was no penetration. I don’t know what Branch was on the year, statistically, coming in but historically he has not been a good three-point shooter. (John Bishop: He was 3-13 on the year.) There you go! (laughs) So we’re not the first team not to really close out hard on him because he’s so good off the dribble attacking the rim. To his credit, he made some adjustments to our Triangle early in the second half, and it took us a few possessions to adjust to what he was doing. And then they got loose in transition a few times, got some big baskets, and got back in the game immediately.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“At the end, I was thinking about missing the second free throw. Now, you guys are laughing, but think about what’s happening. They have no timeouts. There’s 1.3 seconds left. If he’d have missed the first one, we’d have missed the second one for sure because if you make both obviously you can’t lose. If we miss, they were going to have to throw in a full-court shot to beat us. I think one of my assistants looked at me and said, ‘The way things are going, they will make the full-court shot.’ So we didn’t do that. I was disappointed Austin got on the wrong side of Harrison, he was supposed to be on the other side forcing him back towards the ball. And Will got a little too deep. He’s the last guy we wanted to catch the ball. We got lucky. We got the bounce. Lord knows we deserve to get a bounce go our way.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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