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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 85, Rutgers 75

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

If you went to sleep and didn’t watch last night’s game because of the 11:00pm tip, you might have looked at the box score this morning and thought, “Hmm, looks like Creighton played pretty well and picked up a solid win.” They shot 47.5% from the floor and 39% from three-point range. They out-rebounded the Scarlet Knights 39-36. They won by 10, not covering the spread but very nearly so. The Jays shot and made more free throws than Rutgers. They had more bench points, and were nearly even in the paint. They had fewer turnovers than Rutgers, and more second chance points. And while Rutgers shot 17-32 (53%) and 4-7 from three-point range in the first half, they shot just 12-35 (34%) and 2-9 from long range in the second half.

You’d look at all of that, and you’d assume you were right. It’d be a fair assumption. It’d be wrong.

But having missed the sloppiness, the disjointedness, the messiness of this game, and with a few more hours more sleep, you’re probably more productive and operating on less caffeine than the rest of us this morning, and for that I salute you.

Standout Performance:

Cole Huff had a breakout game offensively, scoring 26 points on 10-19 shooting including four three-pointers. He seemed to hit shots a key moments, too; in the first half, he kept them afloat while Rutgers was torching a porous Bluejay defense, and in the second half, he played a key role in the run that turned the momentum of the game, and then helped keep a potential Rutgers comeback at bay with a HUGE three-pointer at the 8:04 mark increasing the lead back out to six at 68-62.

Recap & Analysis:

The first half Monday night in Las Vegas was one of the more infuriating halves of basketball I’ve watched the Jays play in some time. Had their offense not been decent, they’d have been blown out by Rutgers — RUTGERS! — because their defense was…well, the thing about their first half defense is that it didn’t really exist. At times you felt like Rutgers was playing Five on Zero. Out of 17 made baskets for the Scarlet Knights, at least half seemed completely or mostly uncontested. I stopped counting at six because math is hard enough during the day, much less at midnight.

So many times, the Jays would score, and then give up a quick basket to a wide-open shooter. Far too many times, the open shooter was Corey Sanders or Mike Williams, who appeared to be the only two Rutgers players actually capable of making a jump shot. And so it was that with 3:50 to go in the half, they trailed the Eastern Doormat of the Big Ten (not to be confused with the Western Doormat) by seven points, in danger of digging a hole they’d need a Bobcat to dig out of rather than a shovel.

Cole Huff, back in the state of Nevada where he’d played his first two seasons, was the offensive duct tape that held this leaky boat together. He scored 14 first-half points, four of them in the final three minutes as the Jays made it a one-possession game, as he finally showed Jays fans in a game the offensive firepower he’s so often shown in practice the last 18 months. And thanks to those buckets from Huff, and a Mo Watson shot at the rim as time expired, they cut the deficit to 43-40 as they went to the locker room.

At halftime, our Patrick Marshall — eternal optimist that he is — made a bold prediction. The Jays would open the half on a 20-5 run, he said. You’re crazy, people said. Well, Carnac the Magnificent was damn near spot-on; the Jays opened the half on a 20-8 run, taking a 60-51 lead with 11:30 to play, as Rutgers threw up brick after brick. It’s tempting to say their defense was a lot better, and that’s not entirely untrue. They did make some adjustments,  there was definitely more intensity and a greater sense of purpose, and they did put more pressure on their shooters instead of packing the paint, but if we’re being honest here, the Scarlet Knights’ offensive struggles were more of the self-inflicted variety than a result of great defense. Those quick shots they were making in the first half? They continued taking them in the second half, but they stopped making them. When they didn’t go in, there were no rebounders in position to give them a second look. And so the Jays would run in transition, score, give up a quick shot attempt that would miss, and then rinse and repeat.

Now, there’s a school of thought that says those shots stopped going in because Rutgers was worn out from running with the Jays. Coach Mac talked about that in the postgame, and there may be something to it. If so, it merely adds credence to the theory that Rutgers’ second half offensive struggles were not the result of Creighton clamping down on defense, but of their offense wearing the Scarlet Knights down. The result was the same in the end I suppose, but against teams with more offensive weapons — like, say, UMASS in the championship game of this tourney — they’ll need to make some strides defensively to get stops, instead of counting on wearing the other team out.

It was ugly, ugly basketball, epitomized best by an eight-possession stretch that someone should turn into a Vine with “Yakkety Sax” in the background. At the 7:00 mark, Geoff Groselle blocked a shot, and Khyri Thomas secured the rebound. He turned it over by dribbling it off his foot, and Rutgers chucked up a quick three pointer. Cole Huff rebounded it, got it to Watson in transition, and he made a wild pass that was intercepted. Rutgers chucked up another long three, and it was rebounded by Groselle again. Watson then turned it over again by driving into the lane and making an ill-advised pass, only to steal it right back two seconds later and fire a long pass downcourt that you were certain would be another turnover, given how things were going. Instead, mercifully, Groselle secured it and made a layup, and 52 seconds of some of the worst basketball you’ll see all month were over.

It’s probably a good thing this game was buried on YouTube at 11:00pm local time, where a few thousand die-hards could gather and listen to the dulcet tones of Ed O’Bannon describe in his best Golf Analyst Voice a different game than the one they were watching. It was at once a completely forgettable and utterly unforgettable game all at once.

They Said It:

“I think the effort defensively was a lot better in the second half. Two things happened. We adjusted our gameplan. Daniels was 0-5 for the year from three-point range, and Sanders was 1-7. And in the games we watched, they weren’t very aggressive at looking to shoot the three-point shot, and some of their misses — this is how I judge shooters — if you’re on the front of the rim or the back of the rim and it looks soft, maybe it’s a good shot. If you’re missing right one time and left the next, generally it’s not. For both of those guys to come out and shoot it well, our plan was really to pack the paint, make them shoot jump shots over top of us, keep them from getting to the rim, and keep them from getting to the foul line. We did that, but to their credit they made a lot of jump shots the first half. And our offense was just good enough to keep us in it.

In the second half, we changed our plan. We were more aggressive on those guys, we brought our bigs up a little higher onto some of the ball-screen coverage, and our guys just did a better job of executing. Maurice was much better in the second half than his first half. I was really proud of the way he responded and played in that second half. The defense got better. They shot 53% the first half and 35% the second. We’d like to hope that our transition offense and our willingness to run every possession will wear into a team at some point. A lot of times it’s not going to happen in the first half, it’s going to be in the second half. There were a couple of times where on a made basket we shot a layup on the other end, because they were jogging back on defense trying to catch their breath. I liked what we did the second half. It’s a good win and it moves us on to the championship on Wednesday.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I think the ball movement was better tonight as a whole compared to Indiana. Part of that was Indiana’s plan: you take away the shooters, lock them off, let Maurice Watson and their big guys play 2-on-2 in the middle, and force him to go in and shoot layups all night. Unfortunately in that game it got away from us, and you can stay with that defensive plan when you’ve got an 18-20 point lead. Tonight, it was more of a prototypical defensive plan against us. They were in the gaps and there were some slips in the first half where we were able to make things happen. They started to cover the slip, and then we were able to get three-point shooters open. In the second half, I thought the guys made the reads better, I thought we ran harder, and finally imposed our will by running in transition and pushing the basketball. That all starts with Maurice. The wings need to run, we need to get a big guy to the rim, and  that means Maurice needs to run every time. It’s a lot to ask out of a point guard, especially when you’re guarding a guy in Corey Sanders who had a big first half.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Cole and I watched film on the way out here, and one of the things I talked about with him is if you can lock in and engage yourself in the other parts of your game, offense has a way of coming back. When you try and try so hard to force the issue offensively, that’s what you’re thinking about. You’re probably going to miss some blockouts, probably going to miss some back-cuts, probably going to miss some defensive assignments, probably not going to run the floor like you’re supposed to run it. Tonight he scored a lot of points but I thought he let it come to him. And to his teammates’ credit, when he got it going, they understood — if we see him in a 12-15 foot post-up, we need to get him the ball, we need to let him go to work. Very proud of the way he played, and not just offensively, but I thought the activity from a defensive standpoint was a lot better. And obviously he went out there and got some rebounds as well.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Well, we’ve had some trouble at the free throw line, though the second half was better and we need to build on that. But I thought there were times in the first half where it was a close game and we’d score in transition, and then we’d give it right back on the other end with a one-pass shot or an attack to the rim. We have to have a little more pride, because that’s how you knock teams out. When you’re on a roll offensively, and you can put a few stops together, you can knock somebody out of their misery. I didn’t think we did a good enough job of that the first half. The second half was better. We put some stops together. They scored 19 points on their first 30 possessions, and we were able to stretch that lead as a result. A lot of good things we’ll take from tonight, and certainly some guys that will learn from what transpired.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

You Said It:

Bluejay Twitter was a wild place Monday night and early Tuesday morning. Here’s an extra-large collection of the best tweets.

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