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Morning After: Creighton 80, St. John’s 70

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton goes 6-12 from the free throw line in the first half, and 15-17 in the second. Creighton gets out-rebounded 27-20, and 10-5 on the offensive glass, in the first half but out-rebounds St. John’s 19-12 overall and 7-3 on the offensive glass in the second half. And the Bluejays once again had four players with 10 or more points: Geoff Groselle had 22 points, Watson 17,  Huff 14 and Milliken 11.

But the most important stat of the day, as pointed out to us on Twitter by Friend of WBR Ryan Holmgren, is the Bluejays are now 1-0 this season in Big East games where they have a lead in the final minute. Ha!

Standout Performance:

Geoff Groselle continues to amaze with his shooting efficiency. He made his first eight baskets on Thursday afternoon, and finished 9-10 with 22 points. Time after time, he got position low in the block on St. John’s defenders, his guards got him the ball right on cue, and he finished at the rim with his patented spin-to-the-baseline move. It’s an almost unstoppable play for the seven-footer, as his season shooting percentage which sits just south of 75% indicates. Once he catches it that deep in the paint, you might as well just give him the points as a defender. FS1’s Donny Marshall noted it on the telecast, and he’s right: your only chance is to push him out away from the hoop early in the possession so that his post touches come from 8-to-10 feet out; he’s not a jump shooter and not a great ball-handler in traffic. Most teams CU has played have not been able to do that consistently, including St. John’s today, and Groselle has abused them. Teams will certainly start to double-team him, and he’ll have to adjust. But until then…

With these guards, once he seals his man low on the block, it’s over. And it’s a beautiful sight.

Recap & Analysis:

It wasn’t always pretty, but the Bluejays led almost wire-to-wire and notched their first Big East win of the year — a game they absolutely had to have, as we talked about in the Primer. Cole Huff scored eight of Creighton’s first 10 points, including two three-pointers, to get them off to a good start while his teammates got the butterflies out, and they took an early 10-4 lead. St. John’s would make the first of several first-half runs to cut it to 15-13, thanks in large part to sloppy box-outs by Creighton on defense which allowed the Red Storm to snag one offensive rebound after another. The Jays then took advantage of one of St. John’s big problems this year — long stretches of offensive futility — to push the lead out to double-digits at 26-15 despite not playing all that well.

The Bluejays were getting the shots they wanted, for the most part, as Groselle and Zach Hanson were productive in the paint and their shooters got good, open looks from the perimeter. Unfortunately, they were ice-cold from three-point range — 3-11 in the first half — and not much better from the free throw line, going 6-12. Those two lines in particular kept Creighton from being able to build a bigger lead when they had the chance, and wouldn’t you know it, St. John’s made them pay. After leading 28-18 with 5:26 to play in the half, the Johnnies ended the half on an 11-5 run to make it a ballgame.

Two of Creighton’s seniors had seen this show before, and clearly didn’t wish to bear witness to it again. Groselle scored the first six points of the second half, James Milliken scored six straight of his own a couple of minutes later, and by the 13:30 mark the Jays had a double-digit lead again, 53-43. The Red Storm were never closer than six points the rest of the way, despite the Jays’ continued struggles from three-point range — they were 4-11 in the second half after the 3-11 first half — because they made their free throws (15-17 in the half), they pounded the ball inside (18 of their 47 second-half points came in the paint), and because they boxed out to prevent St. John’s from dominating the offensive glass.

Huff would wind up with the first double-double of his Bluejay career, logging 14 points and 11 rebounds, including six boards in the second half. Maurice Watson had 17 points and 8 assists, though he did have five turnovers. James Milliken showed flashes of the player he was down the stretch a year ago, finishing with 11 points on 3-5 shooting and 2-3 from three-point range. Zach Hanson had six points, including one massive follow-up dunk in traffic off a missed shot, and generally held his own on defense when Groselle was on the bench.

On the downside, Isaiah Zierden was off from the start, missing his first two 3-point attempts (never a good sign) and finishing 2-8 from three-point range in 33 minutes. And Khyri Thomas played just 14 minutes, including only four in the second half, in one of his least-productive games as a Bluejay.

The win sets up a Saturday night showdown at the CLink, as the Jays welcome in a ranked Villanova team who dismantled #6 Xavier this afternoon by 31 points. That’s the beauty of the Big East: while they may have notched zero marquee wins in the non-conference, there’s ample opportunity to do so in the league, starting with the second game.

They Said It:

“Those five turnovers bother me. At some point I have to understand I can still be aggressive. I passed up a lot of shots today that led to turnovers. I’ve been so worried about getting my teammates involved, and I’ve been successful with that the last eight or nine games, that I kind of lose track in the last five minutes of a game that I have the ability to take over a game. We’ve got so many shooters, the defense won’t leave them, so I can take advantage of that. I need to pick my spots better, and take care of the basketball better late in games.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM Postgame

“One thing I tell my bigs is, ‘Listen, if the ball hits your hands, it’s your ball! If you turn it over, it’s still a turnover on me. I want that responsibility.’ The one thing I told Geoff and Zach is, if you don’t catch it, I don’t care — I’m going right back to you. And I told Geoff specifically, man, have some confidence in yourself. No matter how many times you travel in the lane, or turn it over, as long as I’ve got the ball it’s coming back to you. That’s how I keep my guys ready, I build their confidence up, I don’t go away from them. I don’t put my head down and blame them for anything, everything is on me. A couple of the turnovers, I jumped in the air to make a tough pass and just shouldn’t have done it. They didn’t catch it, but that’s my fault — I need to be able to adjust to make easier passes to them.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM Postgame

“I don’t think I could breathe the first five or six minutes of the game, I was so excited. Growing up (in Philadelphia), Villanova was my dream school. To play in this conference was always something that was important to me. Everyone doubted me and said I couldn’t do it. They said I couldn’t lead a team because of my size. I’m just overwhelmed with emotion right now. I appreciate the opportunity that Coach Mac gave me. There’s a lot of other point guards out there who were transferring at the same time as me. I just want to be the catalyst for this team and take advantage of the opportunity that’s in front of me. There’s only 18 games in the conference season, and for Geoff and James, this is it. This is their last opportunity. Going out there for them and being able to be effective in the Big East can do nothing but boost my confidence. All of my guys had my back the whole game, and that made it so easy.” -Maurice Watson on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought we had some wide-open looks from the perimeter that we missed, and we were 6-12 from the free throw line and two of them were front-ends. So we left eight points on the floor there with our poor free throw shooting. Fortunately our defense was good enough the first half to hold us in there. We talked about offensive rebounding a lot at halftime — especially about the ball-screens where we were getting stretched out, and our guard wasn’t coming in to clean up their big guy on the outside. We did a better job of that in the second half. And then our offense was better the second half as well. We made a few more shots, we got to the foul line again early which I thought was key, and then the difference was we made the free throws. That allowed us to stretch the lead out. Certainly wasn’t pretty, I think there were some first game Big East jitters on both sides, but I think this was one we had to get. That’s just the reality with what we’ve got coming ahead this week. We had to come and do the job here. I was proud of the way our guys competed.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I didn’t think their shooters got good looks. We were going to live with their bigs, somewhat, one-on-one, except for Jones and because of our double-teams I think they decided not to play him as much. That small lineup was something they’d used a little bit, with Ellison at the ‘4’, but not a lot. That maybe caught us off guard. Our plan going in was to use a small lineup against Sima and pull him away from the rim, but when I put Toby in in the first half he just couldn’t move. He was not moving even as good as he was in practice yesterday. So we decided to go with Ronnie in the second half. I thought Ronnie gave us some good minutes, he was productive, he made a nice play going to the basket and dumped it off to Geoff for a layup. Those are the things he has to continue to do. We went a little bit more with experience down the stretch. James was playing well, so we let him play with Z and Mo, and then Tazz and Ronnie didn’t play as much. They have to be ready, though, because we’re going to need all hands on deck on Saturday night.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“A couple of the time with Mo, I just thought he got deep into the paint to where he feels like he has to jump up in the air to make a play, but you just need to keep your dribble and take it back out to the other side if you don’t like what you see. With no five-second call, he can keep it for 25 seconds for all I care. Just hang on to that dribble. And against the press I thought he attacked too much. The one time, all you have to do is get it across the half-court line and then tap the brakes and let everyone flow past you, but he ran into the defender and got a charge. He was really excited for this first Big East game, and for him to come to New York and play so well, in a historic building like Carnesecca Arena with all of his family here, there were a lot of emotions going through his head. He doesn’t hide his emotions very well, and that’s something we have to work on. Because if you’re going to be an elite-level point guard your teammates shouldn’t be able to tell if you just made a good play or a bad play. You’ve gotta be rock solid in terms of your approach to the game, your body language, it has to be consistent. And we’re riding him hard, he played a lot of minutes today, but he was a big reason we were able to take Mussini out of the game. He was in his face, but he also got underneath of him and pressured him to make his shots difficult.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought Malik blew a couple of defensive assignments, scouting report concentration assignments, in the first half. The one three that Mussini got was when Malik was in the game, and it was his blown assignment. You can’t do that. We have to know personnel, we have to understand what their strengths are and try to take that away. They weren’t pressuring very much and I just thought Tyler could maybe do a better job making sure Mussini didn’t get loose for a three.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought Geoff was good. I was on him, rebounding-wise, because I thought he committed to blocking a few shots that were going to be really tough to block and took himself out of rebounding position. You have to be really intelligent as a shot-blocker. Especially if we’re small on the backside, if you’re going to go try to block it, in our situation, you have to get it. Otherwise we’re putting a guy like Z or Maurice trying to block out Sima. You just can’t get it done. He and I talked about that a lot. Obviously I would like to see him rebound a little bit better than he did. But his positioning inside was outstanding. I thought our guys did a good job of getting him the ball with some different angles. He’s going to start to draw more attention, and he did have a couple of turnovers against pressure today. He’s going to have to get used to that, because as he keeps being effective and efficient, more double-teams are going to come. They’re not going to just let him stand there and do what he’s doing. But he’s playing big for us, he’s had a good couple-week stretch. Rob Anderson told me he made 21 shots in a row before he missed going back three games. I asked Rob if that was a record, and for the first time in six years Rob didn’t know (laughs). My guess is by the time I get on the plane I’m going to have an answer to that question.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Cole is usually a guy who, if he gets off to a good start, you want to ride him. He’s a guy that will make a bunch in a row. That’s why we went to a lot of sets that we haven’t run yet this year, to get him looks once he hit the first couple. He was active on the glass, he was active going to the rim, he made his free throws, and we’re going to need him to step up and knock down shots like he did today. Especially with Toby limping around, we just don’t have depth at that position. We’re probably playing Cole a few too many minutes to keep him fresh and have him able to do everything we want him to do.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I haven’t watched a lot of Villanova yet. I watched their game against Oklahoma, and I hope they shoot like that against us (laughs). I hope it’s a 3-32 or whatever it was. But that’s not likely. They’re the most experienced team in the league. When you think about what they accomplished last year, and the key pieces they have returning, they understand each other, they understand what their mission is defensively, they can switch a lot of screens and make it tough on you, they have a lot of guys that can put their head down and get to the rim. And they pretty much have four guys on the floor that can shoot it all the time. And then you’ve got the big kid inside that can do some damage. We’re going to need a great effort, and obviously it’s going to be mostly a mental preparation. We can’t practice for them, and they probably can’t for us either after playing today. We’re going to have to really talk through what we want to do, and then try to execute it. It’ll be fun, I’m hopeful that we’ll fill the arena and have it rockin’, and maybe we can feed off the energy of the crowd to get our tired legs going.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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