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Morning After: Creighton Moves to 2-0 in Big East with 79-66 Win at Seton Hall

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[Box Score]

Key Stats: Creighton destroys Seton Hall on the glass 38-27, on points in the paint 40-20, and on second-chance points 19-2. Seton Hall gets one — ONE — offensive rebound the entire game. Creighton commits just four turnovers, two per half.

Favorite Moment: Midway through the first half, Doug McDermott took an inbounds pass under his own basket, jumping to catch the ball and releasing the shot mid-flight about three feet from the hoop completely uncontested. It was a remarkable play on it’s own merits, but it also perfectly illustrated the defense (or lack thereof) played by Seton Hall on him in the first half.

The reaction of Pirates coach Kevin Willard says it all.

Quick Recap: To start the game, Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard opted to play the Bluejays straight-up defensively, and Doug McDermott quickly showed what a foolish exorcise that is by scoring 11 of his team’s first 13 points. He scored the game’s first basket, then led the Jays through a back-and-forth affair over the next eight minutes as three Seton Hall players nailed open looks from the perimeter (Brian Oliver, Brandon Mobley and Sterling Gibbs).

Eventually, the Pirates stopped hitting shots, and when they did, their lack of inside players hurt them — both Eugene Teague and Aaron Geramipoor were out due to injury. CU controlled the paint and the boards with ruthless efficiency, routinely giving Seton Hall just one opportunity at a basket before the ball was running the other direction.

That they were able to do that despite foul trouble limiting Austin Chatman was an impressive feat. The Jays’ junior point guard picked up two fouls in the first 90 seconds of the game, and spent the rest of the first half on the bench. Devin Brooks was the main beneficiary, playing 14 minutes in the first stanza and scoring 9 points with 4 rebounds while most importantly turning it over only one time.

McDermott wound up with 22 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists and a steal…IN THE FIRST HALF. As a result, his team held a 45-33 lead.

In the second half, Seton Hall made the only adjustment they could — they began double-teaming Doug McDermott every time he caught the ball, which led to his production being stifled but as usually happens, his teammates took advantage of the defensive attention paid to him by making wide-open shots elsewhere. Ethan Wragge and Jahenns Manigat both made a pair of threes in the second half, and Grant Gibbs added eight points of his own, as Creighton maintained their double-digit lead throughout the game’s final 20 minutes.

Quotables:

“I thought we rebounded really well, and that’s always going to be an area we’ll have to work really hard at. We don’t have any natural rebounders. Ethan really battled down there, Doug was really good, so that was good. And then when you come on the road, the formula is always to not turn the ball over and that’ll really help you get road wins, which are hard to come by.” -Grant Gibbs on 1620AM Postgame

(On single-covering Doug) “I think that comes with teams that haven’t played us before. And when they do that, everyone else has to realize what they’re doing in terms of one-on-one stuff down on the block, to take advantage of it. And Doug did a good job of working hard to get open. That’s something that he kind of slides away from sometimes, and he was focused on that today, which kind of got him going.” -Grant Gibbs on 1620AM Postgame

(On a possible hangover from Marquette) “Nah, I think we were fine. I think the second half was a little disappointing just because we had a letdown in our execution, especially defensively. We kept fouling and prolonging the game when that probably didn’t need to happen. But for us, every night is a new challenge, a new arena, a new team that we wouldn’t have ever had the opportunity to play. At Seton Hall, in a different year that’s probably one of our biggest games of the year, right? We have to take some value in that, and I think we had a mature approach to that and understood how important this game was, and how important it will be later on.” -Grant Gibbs on 1620AM Postgame

“I had more open touches in the paint than maybe the last six games combined. That was such a great feeling, I was like ‘This is basketball! This is fun!’ (laughing). But it was great, the guys recognized that they weren’t really double-teaming me, and I had a lot of space to work. It just felt so good to get back to that.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We were all on the same page, scouting-report wise. They didn’t have Gene Teague, so they didn’t have that crazy-good offensive rebounder, and we were able to take advantage of that. It’s been a focus of ours all year. Cal came in as a great offensive rebounding team and we shut them down, Marquette had four inches on our bigs and we found a way there, and tonight with all these athletes…it’s just a concentration thing.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Grant and Jahenns went for 26 points, 9 rebounds and 9 assists, with no turnovers. To come in here on the road and only have four turnovers against a team that really tries to turn you over, and turn their defense into offense…I was really proud of our guys.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We found a way to get 11 offensive rebounds, and we weren’t really sending a bunch of guys. We felt getting back and finding Oliver in transition was really critical, and trying to get Sterling Gibbs slowed down was important. In the first half, it worked out as perfectly as we could have hoped for defensively, and we even kept them off the free-throw line.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

(On a 40-20 edge on points in the paint) “I think we executed some of our sets better than we have. We got Doug a layup to start the game, we got a couple layups on some out-of-bounds plays. We executed well, and the guys were spaced well. And then the rest of it came from ‘I’m not leaving Ethan, I’m not leaving Doug, my coach is yelling at me to stay close, Manigat’s making every shot he takes, we have to stay close to him.’ Well, that doesn’t leave many guys in the lane. I thought Devin got in there, Manigat got in there, Grant got into the teeth of it, so that was good to see.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

(On not coming out flat, or being hungover from Marquette) “We talked to the team after shootaround this morning about that. I was standing at center court, and I brought them together and said, ‘It’s like 65 degrees in here, it’s cold, I’m not sure there’s going to be a lot of people in here, so it kind of reminds me of the G.W. game. So we have to find a spark. You’re going to have to find it yourself. Guys on the bench, you’ve got to be the best cheerleaders ever, be pumping guys up when they come off the floor, cheering after shots.’ I just wanted to make sure they went back and remembered what the George Washington game felt like. How flat we were. And how we allowed it to affect us. Our shots didn’t go in like we wanted to, and it impacted what we were trying to do on the defensive end of the floor.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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