Bluejay Beat Podcast:
Inside the Box Score:
During a first half where Creighton had leads of 10-0, 27-4, and 37-7, and ultimately led 48-22 at the break, the Jays were playing A+ basketball. Defensively, they executed their gameplan nearly perfect, cutting off driving lanes and forcing Nebraska to create offense in the halfcourt where they struggle. Sure enough, the Huskers were 8-of-34 from the field and 3-of-14 from three-point range.
Meanwhile, the Jays were 17-of-33 overall and 8-of-16 from three-point range. They turned all those missed Husker shots into a 27-18 edge on the glass, a 10-2 edge in fast break points, and put the game on ice before the second 20 minutes could even begin.
Marcus Zegarowski led the way, again, with 30 points, 9 rebounds and six assists. He shot 13-of-19 from the floor, made 4-of-7 from three-point range, and was the best player on the floor by a sizable margin.
“He’s tough,” Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg said. “He can hit the three, he’s a very good finisher around the rim, and he can hit the mid-range pull-up shot. He’s a hell of a player.”
He’s emerged as the leader of the team over the season’s first month, a role he’s worked hard to improve in.
“Leadership is always, constantly, talking in practice and in games. Sharing what I see to help someone else out. Talking, talking, talking all the time,” Zegarowski said in a postgame radio interview. “I’m still working on it. That’s why it’s important to have a great head coach and great staff. They’re teaching me how to grow that part of my game.”
Recap and Analysis:
On Creighton’s very first possession Saturday afternoon, Damien Jefferson drained a three-pointer that touched nothing but the net. Though he had been a reliable shooter from the perimeter prior to his injury a year ago, he had been 1-of-15 this season from three-point range entering the game. It was an early indication of the sort of afternoon we were in for.
After a three from Ty-Shon Alexander, Christian Bishop left zero doubt about the sort of afternoon the Jays had in store. He caught an alley-oop and threw down a vicious dunk in the face of Thor Thorbjarnarson, posterizing him in the minds of Bluejay fans everywhere the way P’Allen Stinnett once did to Nebraska’s Shang Ping many years ago.
That dunk made it 8-0 Bluejays after two minutes. Then Jefferson hit a second 3-pointer:
Alexander hit a second 3-pointer:
And it was 18-2, forcing Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg into a timeout. Creighton’s defense was stopping the dribble and forcing the Huskers to run offense in the half-court, where they’ve been a much different — and much, much worse — team so far this year. It was something we talked about in our Pregame Primer as a key to the game, because when Nebraska is unable to score by driving deep into the defense before they can set up, they often can’t score period. That was true even more than anyone in blue could have imagined on Saturday.
“Everyone on the team came in with the mindset of being aggressive on both ends of the floor,” Marcus Zegarowski said in a postgame radio interview on 1620AM. “We realized early that we could get whatever we wanted on the offensive end, if we played defense. That was our emphasis in practice: don’t let them get into the gaps and drive.”
Time after time, possession after possession, Creighton’s guards stopped the initial action of Nebraska’s guards and forced them to run their offense in a half-court set. And time after time, it resulted in shots that clanked off the rim, shots that barely drew iron, shots that had no chance of going in.
Meanwhile, Creighton was making plays like this one. Shereef Mitchell drove into the paint and collapsed the defense, then kicked it out to Jefferson, who passed it to a fairly-open Mitch Ballock, who passed up a good shot for a great shot with a laser-beam pass to the corner. The recipient? Marcus Zegarowski, who drained the three and with just eight minutes elapsed, ended the competitive portion of the game. It was 21-4 Bluejays.
“The goal just was to get a quick lead. We had to make sure that they know that we’re here, and we’ll always be here,” Ty-Shon Alexander said in the postgame press conference. “That was just our mindset, which is always to attack.”
If Nebraska wasn’t aware of Creighton’s intentions at that point, Omaha native Shereef Mitchell made sure of it soon thereafter. First, he raced downcourt to catch a pass in transition and finished strong through contact.
Then he juked a defender out of his shoes, drove to the basket, and scored an up-and-under layup off the glass. That made it 31-7 Creighton, and flashbacks to favorite moments in this series began entering the minds of Jays fans everywhere.
Moments like the glorious 38-8 start in 2013. Or the 31-11 halftime lead in 2005. That’s the kind of day this was.
The scoreboard moment to remember from this one came after a fastbreak dunk from Bishop. Jays fans have seen this movie before — many times before — and it never gets old. Like all your favorite movies, you can quote your favorite lines. Bishop’s dunk made the score 37-7, and gave this game the kind of singular score to signal exactly which blowout you’re talking about when it comes up years from now on social media, message boards, and over a cold one at the bar. The quotable line, as it were.
37-7.
“It really hurt a lot, especially all the messages and things people were saying down at Nebraska last year,” Alexander said. “We took it personal. Obviously we wish we could have beat them by more, but we did what we had to do.”
Speaking of social media and message board fodder, that quote from Alexander ranks right up there with the all-time greats in this series, doesn’t it?
“We wish we could have beat them by more.”
That Alexander chose to mention the signs Nebraska basketball fans held a year ago, and the things they yelled to anyone in blue — well documented in the Omaha World-Herald, and laughed about then by many of the same folks in red who complained when the shoe was on the other foot Saturday — was satisfying.
“Our fans get it, and it was fun to be part of it with them today,” Greg McDermott said, taking the high road but talking with an unmistakable tinge of amusement in his voice during a postgame radio interview. “It’s great to hear there was some creativity in the student section today.”
From the fans to the players to the coaches, this was personal. It was a message you heard echoed everywhere.
“We watched the film from last year this week, and the way they beat us was really embarrassing,” Jefferson added in postgame radio interview. “We just couldn’t let the crowd down today, we couldn’t let ourselves down, so it was really personal.”
And so the onslaught continued. Three free throws from freshman Jalen Windham made the score 40-9. A couple of possessions later, Zegarowski stopped on a dime, froze his defender, then zoomed past him for a wide-open layup:
On another, the Jays showed off their superior ball movement to create an open look in the corner that Alexander drained.
And at halftime, it was 48-22 Bluejays. In the second half, foul trouble and fatigue began to set in, and Nebraska settled in offensively. Christian Bishop picked up his third and fourth fouls in quick succession, and headed to the bench with 17:05 to play and the Jays up 60-30. With Kelvin Jones unavailable, it left the Jays shorthanded, literally, forced to play Jefferson in the middle as part of a five-guard lineup.
“It limited what we could do offensively,” McDermott said. “And our ‘Up 30 points defense’ has a little work to do. But I think human nature is part of that. Too many good things took place that I’m not going to spend much time dwelling on mistakes that we made because this is a big win for us.”
It had been hoped that Jones could play, and give them 8-10 minutes off the bench, but after taping up his ankle in pregame shootaround it was determined he couldn’t go — he couldn’t push off the ankle. X-rays came back clean earlier in the week, and McDermott said after the game that they might opt for an MRI early this week to see exactly what’s causing the continued discomfort.
As the second half rolled along, it became clear this was personal to more than just the players, coaches and fans. CU’s social media team got into the act with a subtle red balloon mention in a highlight tweet:
And during a timeout, the promotions team had Billy Bluejay rolled on a cart towards a lineup of bowling pins. Six bowling pins, to be exact. Public Address Announcer Jake Ryan started it by saying that Billy only needed “six pins to go bowling” — then finished it by saying “Well, at least someone in this state went bowling this year!”
https://twitter.com/Trill_Wats/status/1203423911419011072?s=20
Back on the court, the Huskers briefly cut the lead under 20 midway through the second half, 67-48, but any thoughts of making this competitive — or coming back to win — were taken care of in short order. Zegarowski drove straight to the rim for a bucket in transition on the next offensive possession, and then Omaha native Shereef Mitchell made the play of the game.
Stealing the ball under Nebraska’s basket, he juked around not one but two defenders in a dazzling display of ball-handling. At midcourt, he zipped the ball to Mitch Ballock who promptly drained a three and just like that the lead was back to 25.
“I thought that was the play that took any hope they had of making this a game, it took it out of their body,” McDermott said. “Shereef’s really competing his tail off. He’s getting better every single day.”
The steal and the moves with the ball get all the attention, and rightfully so. But watch Mitchell the second he gets the ball to Ballock — he begins running down to the other end of the floor with his hand up in the air celebrating. Equal parts confidence and swagger.
“If you know, you know.”
That about sums it up, Shereef.
