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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 78, Long Beach State 61

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[Box Score]

Key Stats: Creighton makes 10-17 from three-point range in the first half alone, and 14-27 for the game. Jays have 16 assists on 22 made baskets. Creighton’s bench outscores Long Beach State’s bench 37-15.

Favorite Moment: Coming off the bench for the first time all season, Will Artino provided a spark. Less than a minute after checking in, he rebounded a missed shot by Avery Dingman and slammed home a dunk all in one motion. On the next possession, Artino took a pass from Ethan Wragge and made an easy layup. Then on the other end, he came up with a steal in the paint, and after an official’s timeout, threw down another dunk. Artino’s personal 6-0 run highlighted a stretch where the Jays took the lead in the game after LBSU had led early.

500-ish Word Recap: Greg McDermott isn’t one to tinker with his starting lineup during the season; thanks to good health and consistent play, they’ve used their opening-night lineup in every single game of the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons. After seven games this year, however, he’d seen enough inconsistency in the post to warrant a change, and inserted Ethan Wragge into the starting five in place of Will Artino. For Wragge, it was his first start since his freshman year, back when Dana Altman was still coaching the Jays. It was a gamble, as Creighton’s smaller lineup when Wragge is on the floor is prone to rebounding woes.

In the first four minutes of the game, it looked like Long Beach State was taking advantage of that fact — they were getting second and third chances on offense, and dominating the action inside on both ends. At the 14:50 mark of the first half, LBSU led on the boards 8-1, including one maddening sequence where David Samuels missed a three, Dan Jennings grabbed the rebound but missed the putback, then Jennings grabbed his own rebound and finally converted.

With the score 9-3 in favor of LBSU just three minutes in, it was hard to tell what was causing more consternation among Bluejay fans — the score, or the webcast courtesy of the Big West Conference that was on the fritz. While the griping commenced on Twitter, Wragge and Devin Brooks connected on consecutive threes to tie the game at 9, and then after trading baskets to make it 12-11, Avery Dingman nailed a spot-up three to give Creighton the lead 14-12. Artino scored the next six points, as described above, and that was the end of the competitive portion of the game, for all intents and purposes.

Following that 17-3 run, the Jays continued piling on, making three after three after three. They were 10-17 from behind the arc in the first half alone, a blistering 58.8% pace, and had a commanding 48-28 lead at the break. Isaiah Zierden was 3-3 from downtown in the first half in scoring nine points, by far his best half of basketball as a Bluejay.

In the second half, with the Jays coasting, Coach McDermott rested his starters and played Zach Hanson, Geoffrey Groselle and Avery Dingman extended minutes, an unexpected luxury in a true road game. The high-water mark was a 32-point lead at the 12:38 mark; LBSU cut that lead nearly in half against the Jays bench players, but after four games in six days halfway across the country, resting Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs and Austin Chatman was far more important than style points.

And in the end, the broken webcast wound up as a blessing in disguise considering the game was a blowout victory. With no pictures to watch, people took to social media in droves. The ensuing comparisons of the Big West Conference’s webcast to 1990s technology, clever wordsmithing to joke about “seeing” plays, and even the creation of a legit new hashtag made the game way more fun — and memorable — than it otherwise would have been. Some of those tweets are collected below.

Quotables:

“That was a great bounce-back win, not just for me but for our team. I thought we did a great job of keeping patient in the first half, of letting the game come to us, and playing really good defense.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“It’s a grind. Four games over six days, and I feel like I’ve played my tail off every minute I’ve been out there. That George Washington game, you have to give them a lot of credit, they did a great job of defending me. But there’s going to be nights like that. I just need to better at helping my team win in other ways. That’s all I’m thinking about right now. I’m really glad we could finish it off on a good note against a good Long Beach State team, who I think will win their conference.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

(On being guarded by guard Branford Jones) “That was interesting to me, too. I think all four of his fouls came when he was guarding me. They played a lot of zone, and against that I like to run to the basket to open things up for Z, and Ethan, and all of our shooters. They were huge for us tonight, and I’m going to continue to do that. If they’re going to collapse on me, we’re going to make them pay for it.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“The bench was huge tonight. And talking about Will, you know, he could have definitely hung his head (about losing his starting job) but he didn’t. He had a bunch of energy when he came in, and he was trying to teach me how to do the jump ball before the game because that was the first time I’ve ever done the jump ball (laughing). I don’t think I’ve ever done it before, because Harrison (Barnes) did it in Ames. So he was great, Ethan did a good job filling his role, and then Z was huge for us. I’m just really proud of all those guys.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“Coach Mac does a great job of keeping the bench guys confident and ready to contribute. On this trip, we’ve had practices where the starters sit out and these guys off the bench kind of go at it for a while. He treats them just like he treats any of us. They don’t feel any different than us. They know that we need each and every one of them on any given night, and they know there’s going to be nights like this where we need them to step up for us.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“We need some time off, for sure. My legs are just feeling heavy right now. I’m looking forward to the travel day off tomorrow. Not only is it a big week on the court, with Nebraska on Sunday, we’ve got a big week in the classroom too, since we’ve been gone for a week.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“Well, you know, Coach emphasized, especially after the George Washington game, that the bench has got to be ready. I just tried to do that, really studied the scouting report, and tried to give us a lift any way possible. And my shot was falling today, so that helped.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame Show

“Playing so sporadically has been pretty tough. I talked to my Dad about how to stay focused, and a big person that has really helped has been Garrett Temple. He played at LSU and kind of went through a different situation where he didn’t play at all through the first few games, and he told me to keep working and stay ready because your opportunity will come, but you don’t know when. Don’t get down, and then all of a sudden your opportunity comes and you aren’t prepared to take it.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame Show

“It wasn’t just me, I thought everybody off the bench gave us a huge lift. I though Will was big too. That goes back to attitude, and you guys talked about it with Doug, Will stayed positive and chose to make the best of the opportunity.” -Isaiah Zierden on 1620AM Postgame Show

“Yeah, Grant’s a little banged up, and we had thoughts of not playing him at all, but he insisted on giving it a shot. It was important that our bench stepped up, because we really needed Isaiah and Avery to go in there and give us good minutes, which they both did in different ways. I thought Avery was really good defensively, and I thought Isaiah was solid defensively and hit some big shots. I wasn’t crazy about the last two he took, and him and I talked about that. He’s just got to recognize time and score. He knows better than that. But overall I thought both he and Avery played really well.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“When Devin gets into the paint and thinks about kicking it out, he’s electric. He’s really good. He had three assists, but he probably had four or five more ‘hockey’ assists where he made the pass and then there was one more pass from someone else that led to the shot.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“We talked to our team at halftime about being more physical, especially with Jennings. You can’t just hit him, and then leave your feet as the ball starts to come off the rim. He’s one of those guys you have to hit, hold and almost let the ball come to you otherwise he’s too powerful and he’s simply going to go up overtop of you. I thought we made that adjustment.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“Will came off the bench and did a nice job for us. That’s how I was hoping he would respond. We’ll evaluate Ethan and Doug together in the starting lineup when we look at the tape, and decide whether that’s a good thing. It certainly forces the floor to be spread on the offensive end, but we need to evaluate whether that’s the best thing for our team on both ends.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

(On whether they rely too much on three-pointers) “We are who we are. If we all of a sudden tried to be a team that drives to the rim every time and tried to score, we’re not going to win very much. We have to be a team that does some post stuff with Doug and Will, and we need to get Zach and Geoff going a little bit better, to have a little more of a post presence. We do miss that without Gregory. Everybody was worried about Gregory, even when he wasn’t catching the ball, just his presence in the post created a vacuum in there that opened up some lanes for shooters. This year, we have to get our threes in different ways. Tonight, we got them in transition, we got them by making the extra pass. It’s who we are. We’ve been a team that has shot right around 40% of our shots from behind the three-point line the last couple of years. Tonight we shot over 50%, which is a little high, but they were good shots from great shooters.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

“We have to figure out a way to get better looks on nights when we aren’t making threes, because we’re going to have those nights. We had one on Sunday, and those are the games you have to figure out a way to win when what comes easy to you isn’t coming easy on that night. You have to still figure out a way to gut it out and win it. I’m disappointed in Sunday night, and as a team we’ve had several discussions about how I felt about how we finished that game. We had an opportunity with two minutes left and a lead, and in my mind, those are times you live for as a player. To be in a situation to get a stop to win a game. And I didn’t see that in our guys’ eyes. That’s disappointing. So I challenged the four seniors and Austin, and told them ‘This is your team. You were the five guys on the floor in that situation and NOBODY was picking each other up, and clapping, and getting into a defensive stance and demanding your teammates get a stop.’ So that’s why I put them on the floor tonight to start the game. It’s your responsibility as leaders of this program to establish how we’re going to prepare for games and how we’re going to play in certain situations. Tonight, they did a good job. Even after the 9-3 start, we just didn’t get rattled, and stuck to our plan.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame Show

And Now, Here’s What You Had to Say (SPECIAL BROKEN WEBCAST EDITION!):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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