Bluejay Beat Podcast:
Key Stats:
James Bouknight was amazing, scoring 40 points on 13-of-24 shooting. He drew 11 fouls with all of his drives to the rim. But the rest of the Huskies were atrocious: his teammates combined to shoot 11-for-43 overall and 2-for-18 on three-pointers. And the Huskies had 13 turnovers to just nine assists.
Creighton, too, had more turnovers (16) than assists (13), which is rarely a winning formula for the Jays. Throw in the fact that they made 7-of-27 from three-point range — and 3-of-17 in the second half — and in most any other year would have told the tale of why they lost.
Marcus Zegarowski (4-of-14 overall, 1-for-8 on threes) and Denzel Mahoney (4-of-11 overall, 1-of-5 on threes) had trouble scoring but contributed elsewhere — Mahoney had a career high 13 rebounds, and Zegarowski corralled eight boards.
Recap and Analysis:
11 years of basketball under Greg McDermott (and a decade and a half under Dana Altman) have conditioned Bluejay fans into believing that their team isn’t very likely to win grind-it-out, ugly, physical games against teams who are built for that style of play. Can you blame them? There’s a quarter-century of hoops memories from games like that, games that CU almost always lost. But this group of Bluejays began to change that narrative a year ago, and on Sunday afternoon in Storrs, they turned in more proof of concept.
“I’m really proud of us for winning a grind it out, fist fight of a game,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “Both teams had more turnovers than assists. It wasn’t pretty, but those are hard games to win. And it’s really hard to win that kind of game against a team whose DNA is to play that way.”
Playing against a UConn team that hadn’t taken the floor in 17 days due to a COVID pause, the Jays built an early double-digit cushion that came in handy once the Huskies began to shake off the rust. They scored on a flurry of threes from the usual suspects — Damien Jefferson, Mitch Ballock, Denzel Mahoney — and then took advantage of the resulting defensive focus on the perimeter to get wide-open looks at the rim. Like this dunk from Ryan Kalkbrenner.
Or this one from Christian Bishop.
And another one from Bishop.
But with five minutes to go in the half, both Jefferson and Bishop headed to the bench with two fouls, and UConn’s sensational sophomore James Bouknight took advantage. He scored 10 points in a 12-4 run to end the half, narrowing the Jays’ lead to just four. He’d go on to score 40 points, draw 11 fouls, sink five 3-pointers and shoot 8-for-12 inside the arc, playing the role of one-man wreaking machine. But until Jefferson and Bishop went to the bench, he hadn’t really gotten started; by the time they returned, he was on fire and they were unable to extinguish the flames.
Meanwhile, UConn’s defense was finding its footings, too. From pressing out on passing lanes, spreading out shooters, using their length to close off driving lanes, and using their strength to run through ball screens, they took the Jays out of just about everything they wanted to do, and everything they’d executed in building that 12-point lead.
As the second half commenced, UConn took the lead after just two minutes on a three-pointer by — who else — Bouknight to make it 36-35 Huskies. Zegarowski answered for the Jays with a three to put CU back ahead 38-36. Bouknight promptly nailed another three and it was 39-38 UConn. Ballock hit a three seconds later to answer. The breathless two minutes ended with CU still ahead 41-39.
There were seven lead changes in the first six minutes of the half alone, with Bouknight putting UConn ahead four separate times on buckets. Neither team could pull away, each trading baskets and stops. As the half wore on, individual players went on solo scoring runs, trying to will their teams to victory. With six minutes left, Bishop scored six straight for the Jays, the last of which prompted UConn to call timeout, with CU up 57-53. Bouknight scored five straight out of the timeout to put UConn back up 58-57 in just over a minute. It was part of a 10-2 run that gave the Huskies a four-point lead heading into the final media timeout.
“I looked down at Coach Hurley late in the game,” McDermott said, “and our eyes kinda caught each other, and I said ‘This is a helluva game.’ He said, ‘You’re tellin’ me!’ This was a really high level game. Very competitive, very physical.”
UConn maintained a lead over the final three minutes of the game, but Creighton secured an offensive rebound on three of their final five missed shots, allowing them to hang around. Meanwhile, UConn missed three free throws, including a pair by the previously perfect from the line R.J. Cole with the Huskies protecting a two-point lead, with 11 seconds left to leave the door open just a crack.
βYou got to get lucky once in a while,” McDermott said in his press conference afterward. “We got lucky at the end of the game, but we continued to play to put ourselves in a position to at least have an opportunity there.β
Given the opportunity, they drew up a play for Damien Jefferson. It was nothing fancy; they simply got the ball to him and let him go to work. Jefferson drove to his right, rose up, and sank a jumper to force OT.
“He’s been our heart and soul this entire road trip,” McDermott said, “so we wanted him to either make a play for himself or for somebody else. He made a heckuva shot to get this game into overtime.”
βI was actually surprised when Coach called the play out,β Jefferson said in a postgame interview on GoCreighton.com. βI was like, it’s my time. I’m ready for it. I just stayed composed.”
Then in the extra period, their defense went to work. After UConn briefly led 68-66 in the first minute of OT, they missed seven consecutive shot attempts and had a shot clock violation. By the time Bouknight broke the drought with a three-pointer with 22 seconds left, it was an afterthought — CU had basically wrapped up the win by then. The Jays mixed up their defensive packages, throwing a 1-3-1 zone at UConn that created just enough confusion to be effective. And Ballock twice stopped dribble penetration without fouling by defending the ball-handler straight up and down.
“We practice those vertical walls every single day,” McDermott said. “I’m not sure I like that rule, but it is the rule that you can jump and kind of absorb the contact with your chest as long as your hands are straight up. It is a legal play. We’ve worked hard as a program to make sure that we’re good at that. And Mitch made two incredible plays at critical times to alter shots.”
With their defense holding UConn in check, the Jays pulled away by driving the ball directly into the defense and scoring at the rim, like this one from Mahoney:
And by creating baskets for each other, like this one from Zegarowski to Bishop.
“Marcus had a rough shooting night, but he had eight rebounds. I think that’s the sign of a mature player. They know when they don’t have it going in one area, try to impact the game in other ways,” McDermott said. “Marcus’ pass to Christian late in the game — I’m not sure how the hell he got it up there, and how CB finished it, but Marcus went into the lane trying to figure out who was open and how to spray the ball out if he couldn’t get to the rim. Some guys who are Big East Preseason Player of the Year would think they have to go save their team in that situation by making a basket. Marcus is instead thinking he has to get his team the best opportunity at a basket, and that’s what makes him special.”
Then they clinched the game at the line, which in and of itself was impressive given their struggles there this year. They made six of eight at the line in OT.
βItβs definitely frustrating,β Bouknight told the media afterward. βAt the end of regulation, we thought we had the game in the bag. To lose this game, it definitely hurts.” His coach called it a “devastating” loss, that his team felt like they had “just had (their) heart ripped out of (their) chest”, and said he partially attributed their struggles in overtime to not being able to put aside how they blew the lead in regulation. Ouch.
For the Jays, it wraps up a 2-0 road trip and answers a lot of the questions they left Omaha with after a home loss to Marquette. They’re not going to play a tougher, more physical team than UConn, and to beat them on the road can only pay dividends as the season rolls on.