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Morning After: Gibbs and McDermott Injured in Rough-and-Tumble Win Over DePaul, 81-62

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[Box Score]

Key Stats: Creighton outscores DePaul 57-34 after Grant Gibbs went down with a knee injury, dealing with the loss of their veteran leader out by taking DePaul behind the woodshed.

Favorite Moment: On a night when two teammates suffered injuries, Avery Dingman provided a massive spark off the bench. He scored 16 points, including 11 in the second half, but one basket in particular exemplified his night. Early in the second half, Dingman was fouled hard from behind by DePaul’s Charles McKinney while attempting a three-pointer, sending him sprawling to the court. The shot somehow went in, and after converting the free throw, CU had a 13 point lead and had seized control over the game. Even better, the shot seemed to give Dingman back the offensive mojo he’d been missing for the better part of a year.

Quick Recap: Allstate Arena, or as World-Herald writer Steve Pivovar calls it, the “Armpit of all Arenas”, is not only a dump but a house of horrors for Creighton. In their last two trips to the arena by the airport, they’ve seen three of the best players in school history suffer (potentially) serious injuries — in 2005, Nate Funk’s season-ending shoulder injury occurred there, and last night, both Grant Gibbs and Doug McDermott suffered injuries. Needless to say, the opening of their new arena in 2016 can’t come soon enough as far as CU fans are concerned.

Both injuries came in the midst of a rough-and-tumble first half that saw neither team able to establish any momentum or rhythm. The Blue Demons successfully held McDermott scoreless for the game’s first 10 minutes, and to just seven total points in the first half. With five minutes to play, the game — and potentially the season — changed in a heartbeat. Gibbs was battling under the basket for a rebound and got tangled up with DePaul’s DeJuan Marrero; the play resulted in Gibbs hitting the court awkwardly, grimacing in pain. He laid on the court with his jersey covering his face for several minutes before being helped off the floor, unable to put any weight on the leg.

Jahenns Manigat hit a three on the next possession to cut DePaul’s lead to 28-27, and Austin Chatman nailed a three moments later to give CU a 30-28 lead. Then the Demons of Allstate Arena struck again, when McDermott collided with a DePaul defender on a cut and injured his left shoulder. He came out of the game to get it checked, causing the collective blood pressure of Creighton fans to rise to near-deadly levels, but returned moments later despite being in obvious pain. He managed to make a basket at the horn to give his team a 37-32 lead, but the facial expression he made immediately afterward put a nightmarish bookend on a half of basketball most of us would just as soon forget.

Despite being barely able to lift his left arm above his head, McDermott came back and played 17 second-half minutes, scoring 12 points mostly on shots at close range, since his balky shoulder made jumpers difficult. During every timeout, he alternated between ice packs and heat compresses on the shoulder, but he was on the floor for nearly the entire half, gutting it out.

In the absence of Gibbs, there was an opportunity for someone else to step up. Devin Brooks started the second half, but made two careless turnovers in the first three minutes, and Avery Dingman took his place. The junior turned in a transcendent half of basketball, finally combining the offensive production he displayed as a freshman with the defensive prowess that has earned him minutes this year. In 14 minutes of play, he scored 11 points on 4-5 shooting with four rebounds and a block, while continuing to play lock-down defense on opposing wings. In addition to the three-pointer described above, he had two other highlight-reel baskets, both on aggressive, athletic drives down the baseline for high-percentage shots at the rim. When all was said and done, he scored 16 points on the night after having just 31 total points in the 14 prior games this season.

DePaul made one last run, cutting the lead to 62-56 with seven minutes to go, but Ethan Wragge — “The Lumberjack” — made three 3-pointers as part of a 19-6 run to close the game.

The story afterwards was obviously injuries, though. MRI’s are scheduled on both McDermott and Gibbs today, with early indications being that the injury to McDermott is likely nothing serious while the injury to Gibbs is…well, let’s hope for the best.

Quotables:

“I got in early and hit that first shot, and after that I felt really comfortable the rest of the night. I’ve been focusing on defense a lot when I come into games, spending a lot of energy on the defensive end, even though the last few games I haven’t been hitting shots. It felt good tonight, and that ‘And-One’ was a good way to get back into things. I knew my shots would fall again eventually, and not to worry about it.” -Avery Dingman on 1620AM Postgame

(On the ‘And-One’) “I had no idea the defender was there. I went up to shoot it, and Doug was like ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ I shot it, and it was weird because I got hit coming this way, over the top. My arms went down, and the shot somehow still got off and went in. I have no idea how.” -Avery Dingman on 1620AM Postgame

“Great things happen when we get the ball to Doug in the post. In high school, I didn’t even know what a ‘Post touch’ was. I got to college and they charted post touches, and I asked ‘What does that mean?’ (laughing). That’s something I’ve had to work on a lot. There were times in practice during my freshman year where I’d be on the other end of the floor working on post feeds, because I no idea how to do it. It’s obvious that we need to get the ball in to Doug, that’s something I need to focus on because when we get it in to him, he’s either going to make a play for himself or for somebody else.” -Avery Dingman on 1620AM Postgame

(On rebounding after Echenique) “It’s not a fluke. Some of the teams we match up with, you say, how are we out-rebounding them? It’s a mindset thing, where we know we have to play extremely tough because we’re not the most athletic team in the conference. Defense is the same way. We’re not the most talented team on defense, but we’ve bought into the system, we dig down deep and play tough, and we execute the gameplans.” -Avery Dingman on 1620AM Postgame

(On the injury) “It was just a simple cut, the type I make all the time. This time, I popped him in the wrong spot. I don’t think it’s anything too serious. My dad asked me at halftime if I wanted to play, and I told him ‘Absolutely.’ We’ll get it checked out and have a better answer in the morning, but the win is all that matters.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“It felt better as the second half went on. At halftime, I couldn’t even lift it. I was running down the court and didn’t even have much feeling in it. I actually made a move going to my right shoulder and it didn’t feel so bad when I shot it, so after that I got comfortable, threw some heat on it and tried not to think about it — just tried to think of ways I could help my team win.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We’re so focused on rebounds, because it’s huge. It’s all a mindset. That’s how we’re going to try to win this conference — we have to do it on the boards. We’ve done a great job of working on it a bunch in practice. Ethan’s going up and getting those boards. Avery’s an athlete and able to grab some, Jahenns fights for every single one, and we’re just doing a great job of collectively boxing out as a group and doing gang rebounding.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I’m so happy for Avery. He’s been kind of down lately, confidence wise, and I just kept telling him, ‘Keep shooting. We’re going to get it at some point.’ He’s continued to stick with it, and I think this is huge for him going forward.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We had to fight for this one tonight. I just told the team, I don’t know that I’ve ever been as proud of a team as I am of this group right now, with Grant’s injury in the first half, and we weren’t sure if Doug was going to be able to play in the second half — he couldn’t lift his left arm above his shoulder. I don’t know if you saw him take any threes in warmups, but it was…it wasn’t good. I asked him, ‘Can you shoot a three?’ He said, ‘I’ll try.’ So I said, let’s just go down in the post. Then later, when we were trying to break the press he said I can’t dribble with my left hand, I can’t move my left arm. I told him, ‘Well, they don’t know that. They know Ethan can’t dribble, but they don’t know you can’t!’ (laughing) I told him we need to get you down there just to trick them a little bit.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I’m really proud of our guys. Will Artino, Zach Hanson, Isaiah Zierden, and Avery Dingman. Avery especially was huge off the bench. As I told the team, we don’t know what’s going to happen with Grant, he’ll have an MRI tomorrow and have him see our team doctor, and see what the MRI says. We’ll have one done on Doug’s shoulder and see what the damage is there. But regardless of what the tests say, the next guy has to be ready. That’s the reality of it. Part of this game is injuries and dealing with them. We’re fortunate tonight that our bench was ready to go, because without Avery, and Will, and Z’s contributions, we’d have been in big trouble tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Things were dire at the half. I told the team, we didn’t play well and we allowed DePaul to do the things we didn’t want to let them do. They had six or seven points on offensive rebounds, they probably had six to eight points in transition, where we turned it over and didn’t get back. We wanted them to have to play against our set, quarter-court defense. I really thought if we could clean that up, we’d play much better. But we still had a five-point lead even with Grant going down and Doug being hurt and everything else.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Tonight was great for Zach Hanson, to go in there and contribute the way he did. Will Artino, after not playing great at Seton Hall, had a very productive 12 or 13 minutes. Avery Dingman’s going to have a whole different bounce in his step because of how he played tonight. Devin Brooks played great at Seton Hall when Austin was in foul trouble. So, we’ve had guys step up. It’s probably going to need to continue, because my guess is we’re going to be without Grant for at least the immediate future.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

(On working with Avery Dingman during his struggles) “Coach DeVries has worked with him on his shot. I’ve just told myself I’m not going to talk to him much about it. I think you run the risk of, when you have myself, Coach DeVries, and Coach Lutz, and Coach Sellers and everybody’s in his ear about something different on his shot, it can almost be counter-productive. So I’ve told my staff, D-Rock’s going to work with Avery a little bit after practice for 15-20 minutes, just to get that rhythm back, so let it go. But even through all of that, even when he wasn’t shooting good, he was playing well defensively. He played great defensively against Marquette, he had some good minutes against Seton Hall, so I just never talked about it. I never told him he couldn’t shoot. I think that’s part of it. From a player’s perspective, a coach has got to believe that I can make a shot, because if the coach doesn’t believe it, he’s probably not going to believe it. Then he’ll be tentative, and it’s not going to work.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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