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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Creighton 90, IUPUI 65

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton shot a season-high 59.3% (32-54) from the floor, and held IUPUI to 32.3% shooting, the lowest opponent shooting percentage of the season. Creighton’s bench outscores IUPUI’s bench 41-12, thanks in large part to Toby Hegner (12 points, 7 rebounds) and Zach Hanson (11 points, 6 rebounds).

Standout Performance:

Coach Mac said it on the postgame show, and he’s right: when Maurice Watson plays like he did on Saturday, Creighton is a really, really good team. Watson had eight points and 10 assists, driving straight at the defense and looking to distribute to an open shooter or to score himself. He had three turnovers, but two really should have been credited elsewhere (one where Zach Hanson appeared to be caught off-guard by a pass that hit him in the hands, and one where Geoff Groselle couldn’t corral a pass in the paint). And he communicated on defense to make sure people were in the right spots, while playing a key role to lock down IUPUI’s second-leading scorer Jordan Pickett, hold him below his scoring average, and allow him only seven shot attempts.

Maurice Watson slices into the lane for a basket. (Photo by Mike Spomer / WBR)

Maurice Watson slices into the lane for a basket. (Photo by Mike Spomer / WBR)

Recap & Analysis:

A year ago, Creighton beat Nebraska and suffered from an emotional letdown in the game that followed, needing two overtimes to fight off a pesky South Dakota team from pulling an upset. This year’s team was determined not to suffer the same fate, and from the outset, made their intentions clear. They jumped out to a 26-12 lead halfway through the first half, thanks to some of their best offensive execution of the year — seven assists on their first 10 made baskets — and some of their best defense of the year, forcing IUPUI into a 4-18 start from the floor.

Toby Hegner blocks a shot against IUPUI. (Photo by Mike Spomer / WBR)

Toby Hegner blocks a shot against IUPUI. (Photo by Mike Spomer / WBR)

Their defensive gameplan took IUPUI out of what they prefer to run, forcing them to take shots they didn’t want to take from guys they didn’t necessarily want taking them. “They run an offense similar to Nebraska where one guard back-cuts and another guard fills,” Coach Greg McDermott explained in the postgame show on 1620. “We decided to leave our guy down there on the back cut, the guy that was already in help position, and it meant virtually switching a cut. We’ve switched screens in the past, but tonight we were asking them to switch a cut. It really gave IUPUI problems. That offense was normally about 75% of what they did, at least on the film we saw of them, and because of our defense it was only about 25% tonight.”

That early flurry gave them a big early lead, which allowed the Jays to rest some of their key contributors nursing injuries and get bigger minutes for bench players. As a result, Creighton’s bench outscored IUPUI’s bench 41-12, with Toby Hegner (12 points, 7 rebounds) and Zach Hanson (11 points, 6 rebounds) leading the way. Geoff Groselle was hampered by the ankle that was injured against Nebraska, and played 17 relatively ineffective minutes. He didn’t warm up with the team on the floor, opting instead to stretch on the sidelines to maximize in game situations what he could get out of that ankle, and McDermott noted after the game that Groselle probably shouldn’t have played at all. It was the first time since the Rutgers game that he failed to score in double-figures, with his four points tying a season low. And he had zero rebounds, as he was unable to get any lift off of the ankle to jump for a ball, nor any strength to fight for position.

Cole Huff was in the same boat, still bothered by the shoulder injury he suffered last week at Loyola. He played eight first-half minutes and came out for the second half unable to lift his shoulder above his head, was deemed out for the game, and was replaced in the starting lineup by Toby Hegner. Two minutes into the half, Hegner got blasted in the thigh trying to take a charge, and had to briefly come out of the game. McDermott looked for Ronnie Harrell to take his place, but Harrell was still in the locker room getting his lip stitched up from a first-half injury. Likewise, Martin Krampelj was not even dressed for the game as he rehabs a knee injury. So he had no choice but to put Huff back in, injured shoulder and all. Amazingly, in the one minute he was in, Huff blocked a shot with his good arm, but then came right back out and Hegner came back in.

Malik Albert skies for a dunk in the win against IUPUI. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)

Malik Albert skies for a dunk in the win against IUPUI. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)

Never mind that Hegner is playing through a reaggravation of the ankle injury he suffered in October which sidelined him during the preseason. He battled for 22 minutes, playing one of his best games of the season and finishing three boards shy of a double-double. Ditto for Zach Hanson, who has a nagging foot injury that McDermott said on the postgame will limit him to about 70% effectiveness the rest of the season. He played 23 minutes, and only occasionally showed signs of being slowed by the injury, finishing with 11 points on 5-6 shooting, six rebounds, and three blocks.

It also allowed some other players who hadn’t played a chance to get minutes, most notably Malik Albert, who had seemingly been passed up for the backup point-guard role by Tyler Clement. Albert played 11 minutes, and after some initial jitters, played well with eight points, two assists, three rebounds and a steal that led to a highlight-reel dunk.

Coming off of the win against Nebraska, and playing against a team like IUPUI, they did exactly what they needed to — get a big early lead, withstand a run that made it a bit closer, then pulled away late. Now they get a week off to rest and rehab, study for and take finals, and finally prepare to do battle with a top-ten ranked Oklahoma team in Norman.

They Said It:

“We’ve got a lot of guys that are banged up, so for the team and for myself, it’s important for me to be able to work on being in the right position and getting my hands back so I can stay out of foul trouble and stay in the game.” -Zach Hanson on 1620AM Postgame

“Since the Arizona State game and the Loyola game, we kind of just came together as a team and talked about if we’re going to get close to the goals, or achieve the goals that we’ve set, defense is the priority. With our coaches in practice, we’ve been making it an emphasis and a priority to work hard and really pay attention to the details and that showed in the results the last two games.” -Zach Hanson on 1620AM Postgame

“We took that scenario into consideration (beating Nebraska in Lincoln last year, then needing double-overtime to beat South Dakota the next game). If we want to say away from the things that happened to us last year, we’re going to have to take the wins and take the losses, and we’ve talked about never being too high and never being too low. We got a good win the other night, but this was an important game too and we knew we had to bring it tonight too. We have some guys that obviously didn’t play last year, but went through that with us, so it’s a little of last year and also a little of so far this year — we had a lot of painful experiences last year, and you can look at that as a negative, or you can look at it that the guys from that team grew from it, and with this year’s team, hopefully we can build on that.” -Zach Hanson on 1620AM Postgame

“We talked about Oklahoma a little in the locker room just now. We played well against them in the second half last year, had a great comeback, but we know they’re going to be thinking about the fact that we sneaked one out of them here. We have to get ready. They’re obviously a very good team, but with finals week too we have to get our school work out of the way, and get some guys healed up at the same time.” -Zach Hanson on 1620AM Postgame

“Everybody gets frustrated with themselves at times. I mean, confidence is such a big thing when you shoot the basketball, and so there’s no such thing as a poker face when you’re shooting.

(John Bishop: “But you take it to a different level. Missing free throws earlier this year I thought you were going to kill somebody!”)

I just want to make everything! I don’t want to miss, it’s as simple as that. If it’s possible, I would love for that to happen. I have high standards.” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

Coach Greg McDermott talks to Toby Hegner during the win over IUPUI. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)

Coach Greg McDermott talks to Toby Hegner during the win over IUPUI. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)

“That’s what we’ve wanted — since Day One we’ve wanted to lock down on defense. When we hit that two-game losing streak, I think we were like 278th in the country in defense or something like that, which is unreal. That’s become even more of a focus since then. It’s been a focus all along, we’ve just never done it. So seeing what we did tonight will definitely show us that we are capable of playing lock-down defense, whether or not we can do it every night. If we get a chance to get a rebound and kick it ahead, it’s hard to defend us because we have so many weapons all over the floor. So our opponents better not miss (laughs).” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

“I’ve played the ‘5’ my entire life, really, and if I think back to when I was really young I know what I have to do. My mom tells me EVERY DAY. (Imitating his mom) ‘You’ve played the five before, you know what you have to do, just do it!’ And I’m just like, OK mom, jeez, relax, I get it. But what I’m saying is, I’m used to it, and I actually like playing the five because you’re playing someone bigger and more physical. I like to knock some people down when I’m out there, so it’s kind of win-win for me.” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

“The defense was pretty good. And obviously when you have one of your best shooting games and best defensive games at the same time that’s a pretty good combination. We were really banged up today. Geoff shouldn’t have played at all. Cole probably should not have played at all, he told me at halftime he couldn’t lift his arm above his head. Toby re-injured the ankle that he had all the trouble with earlier, but we had to play him, and he fought through it. Zach’s playing through on one foot, Ronnie bit through his lip so he was getting stitched up at halftime…we needed a sub (early in the second half) and he was nowhere to be found because he was still back there getting stitched. This break could not have come at a better time. We are really banged up. I told the guys, I do not want to see anybody tomorrow. Stay out of the gym. Get ready for finals, get some rest, do your treatments, and then we’ll take Monday off too because of finals. We’ll get back after it Tuesday with some individual workouts, and then practice on Wednesday.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“This was a difficult prep because we were switching screens with the four-man, but we were not with the five. They run an offense similar to Nebraska where one guard back-cuts and another guard fills.We decided to leave our guy down there on the back cut, the guy that was already in help position, and it meant virtually switching a cut. We’ve switched screens in the past, but tonight we were asking them to switch a cut. It really gave IUPUI problems. That offense was normally about 75% of what they did, at least on the film we saw of them, and because of our defense it was only about 25% tonight. We made them do some things they didn’t want to do. And the guys that shot it were the right guys, for the most part.

Z did a decent job on Darell Combs early, he got away from us late in the first half when Z was on the bench with the two fouls and we had an inexperienced lineup out there. In the second half he only scored four points and shot it three times. Our guys did a good job on him. He was coming off a 4-7 three-point shooting night at Missouri State, and we wanted to get him off that line and make him shoot stuff off the dribble. I thought Z did a nice job, but we switched screens a lot so there were times when Toby or Cole were on him, and I thought they did a good job of staying in a stance and making him go over top. And when we did get beat, rather than foul him we let him go in and try to score over Geoff or Zach. Those guys were able to clean up a few of our mistakes in there.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought Maurice got into the teeth of the defense and really looked to spread. A couple of his turnovers were really good passes. He hit Zach in the hands on one in the first half, and then had kind of a reach-around to Geoff in the second half that Geoff lost control of — both were going to result in layups. For him to get 10 assists and do what he did was terrific, and I thought he had a major impact on the defensive end of the floor, too. Just like in the Nebraska game. He was in two spots a lot of the afternoon. And when he plays like that we’re a really, really good team. Now obviously some teams are going to go under some ball screens and he’s going to have to prove he can knock down that jump shot, which I think he can, and obviously his free throw shooting has to improve. He’s always been a pretty good free throw shooter so I’m hoping this is just a little bump in the road because your starting point guard, when you get in close games and situations where the other team has to foul, he’s going to have to step up and knock those down.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I put Malik in as the backup point because I’m searching for consistency. That’s been kind of a moving target, really since the start of the season, on who to use there. I haven’t ruled out using Ronnie there. The person that goes in, I want it to look like nothing changes. I don’t want mistakes. You don’t have to hit homeruns, just move the ball, run the offense, be in the right spots defensively until we get Maurice back in there. We were able to buy some extra time around TV timeouts tonight because there were dead balls around 45 seconds from the timeout, so Maurice had that time plus the timeout before going back in. And Malik was aggressive late in the game, I thought he was tentative the first half, he missed a couple of opportunities in transition where teammates were open. Defensively, he has to get better. Malik’s probably a little better offensively, Tyler’s a little better defensively. So it could be a situational thing. The reality of it is, it’s important in some ways that we’re getting everybody ready. If something happens, we can’t just have one guy. We need both of them to be able to play, and to play confidently.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Well, when I talked to the doctors the night of the Nebraska game on Cole’s shoulder they said that’s normally a week-to-ten-day deal. We’re at a week today, and obviously trying to go out and play in two games is going to slow down that rehab. I’m hoping it will settle down the next couple of days as we’re off. I’m confident that he’ll be close to 100% on Saturday in Oklahoma. I think Geoff just needs some rest as well. And Zach, the reality with his foot is that’s going to be a year-long deal. I think he’s going to play on a 70% foot the entire season. And then he’ll have to shut it down for six weeks when it’s over to try to get that thing healed. You’ll see every once in a while where if he gets it stepped on, or if he rolls it wrong, he just grimaces in pain because it’s a painful deal. But he gave us great minutes tonight. I was really pleased. And Toby with his ankle in the preseason, that was a severely, severely sprained ankle and it’s still not as strong as it needs to be and it’s heavily taped. And then he rolled it again tonight. Those guys will be in getting a lot of treatment, they’ll spend a lot of time with Ben McNair the next 73 hours.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

Khyri Thomas throws an inbounds pass to an open Isaiah Zierden. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)

Khyri Thomas throws an inbounds pass to an open Isaiah Zierden. (Photo by Adam Streur / WBR)

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