Key Stats:
Creighton gets annihilated on the glass, 45-25, including a 14-7 deficit on offensive rebounds. Cole Huff goes 11-16 from the field, while the rest of his team goes 12-40; likewise Huff was 7-11 from three-point range, while all other Bluejays were 1-13.
Standout Performance:
Cole Freaking Huff. What more can you say?
He had a game for the ages, scoring 35 points while missing only five shots, in an offensive show that drew admirers from all angles — Fox Sports’ Gus Johnson, Seton Hall’s players and coaches, opposing fans — and had the Garden buzzing. It tied the most points ever scored by a Bluejay in a conference tourney game, equalling Doug McDermott’s 35 in a 2014 Big East Quarterfinal win over DePaul. Next best in the record book is Nate Funk, who scored 33 in a 2007 MVC Semifinal win over Missouri State, a mark McDermott tied in 2012 with 33 against Illinois State.
Something the other three games in that list all have in common? The Jays won all three, and advanced to the title game all three years (winning it all in ’07 and ’12). The shame of Huff’s huge night is that it was wasted in a losing effort, because his teammates were collectively ineffective.
Huff’s monster game continued a positive trend over the second half of the conference schedule, as WBR’s Matt DeMarinis tweeted after the game:
Recap & Analysis:
Sportswriters often write that a player “single-handedly carried a team”, and it’s usually a degree of exaggeration from the reality of the situation. Not so on Thursday night. Huff really did single-handedly carry the Bluejays. He made nearly half of his team’s baskets, all but one of their three-pointers, scored nearly half their points, and had over a third of their rebounds. Only four other Bluejays made a basket, or scored a single point! That’s a real thing that happened!
Geoff Groselle was 3-4 from the floor for 12 points, Maurice Watson was 3-12 for six points, James Milliken was 5-14 for 18 points, and Malik Albert was 1-4 with two points. That’s it. Everyone else was shut out. Huff did everything he could to keep his team in the game, and succeeded for 39 minutes in doing so. That he was unable to carry them across the finish line should not diminish the brilliance of his night.
Seton Hall led for most of the first half with a gameplan that looked pretty similar to the one they used in Omaha: dominating the backboards, taking away Mo Watson’s driving lanes, and forcing the Jays to make jump shots. Huff made them pay to the tune of 15 first-half points, including 5-7 from three-point range, but he got no help. Time after time, the Jays got good looks inside, and time after time they missed — most egregious was Watson shooting 2-9 in the first half, with seven of the misses coming from inside 15 feet, and James Milliken missing three shots from closer than that.
Meanwhile their defense had no answer for the Pirates’ best shooters, who benefitted from both open looks due to blown assignments and from second-chance opportunties due to offensive boards. Isaiah Whitehead toyed with the clearly-hampered Isaiah Zierden, who was tasked with trying to guard him, and nearly had a double-double at halftime with 11 points and 8 rebounds. Khadeen Carrington made three of five from downtown, nearly equalling Huff’s output, while Desi Rodriguez chipped in with seven points and six boards before half.
Still, the Jays were hanging around, and with 8:43 to go cut the deficit to 23-17. A 6-0 Pirate run, keyed largely by a blown goaltending call, wound up being a huge swing in momentum. Watson went up for a layup and had his shot pinned against the backboard above the rim by Myles Carter — the textbook definition of goaltending — but it went uncalled, and Seton Hall raced downcourt for a layup. While Bluejay staff on the bench went nuts and fans at MSG and at home joined them, the official Big East Twitter account shared a video of the play, calling it a great “block”. Moments later the tweet mysteriously disappeared, though the video was preserved here:
It hasn’t been a banner tourney for officials thus far, and Fox’s Gus Johnson was brutally honest about their performance during Thursday’s play-in games — perhaps too honest. Early in this one he gushed about Big East officials being the “best in the business!” in a statement that may well have been sincere, but did not sound that way on TV.
Trailing 39-30 at the half, Creighton charged out of the locker room with an 11-4 run to cut the deficit to 43-41, thanks to nine points from Huff. Playing the quicker, more athletic lineup that had yielded positive results at Xavier on Saturday — namely plugging in Malik Albert at the “2” for Isaiah Zierden — the Jays once again saw their fortunes improve. Passing and driving lanes were suddenly not so hospitable. Shots rarely went uncontested. Tempo increased. And what had once been a 14-point deficit became a one-point Creighton lead with 11:24 to go when Albert ripped away the ball at midcourt and raced 75 feet for a fastbreak layup.
The second half was the sort of back-and-forth, up-and-down, answer-for-answer game of one-upsmanship that gave the Big East Tournament the reputation of the greatest show in college hoops once upon a time. It was an electrifying late-night game in the World’s Most Famous Arena that said to the critics who claimed the Big East could never be the BIG EAST anymore that, yeah, it’s the same as it ever was. Cole Huff, Isaiah Whitehead, and Khadeen Carrington saw to that.
Creighton immediately surrendered that 52-51 lead, but would tie it three more times in the final four minutes. The first came when Huff was fouled shooting a three; he hit all three free throws to tie it at 63. Two possessions later, he drilled a three-pointer to tie it 66-66. And with 1:10 to play, Groselle backed down his defender and made a jumper to tie the game at 73.
Then as the Bluejays have done too often to count, they invented a new way to lose a close game. First, they turned it over on an inbounds pass with 26 seconds left, as Watson attempted to thread the needle and get the ball to James Milliken under the basket. He didn’t, Carrington came up the steal, and got the ball upcourt to Derrick Gordon.
Instead of icing the game, Gordon missed both free throws, giving CU the final possession and a chance to tie or win it without having to defend again.
What’s that? They didn’t get the rebound? Whitehead, positioned in the second slot beside the lane, zoomed around and above Groselle in the low block to grab the rebound before Groselle even got off his feet, you say? And was fouled, made both free throws, and clinched the game? There’s no way that’s true.
Of course, it is. The post-Doug McDermott Bluejays find unique and horrifying ways to lose close games at a tortuous rate, to the point where you almost expect it to happen. That’s a terrible way to survive as a fan, a player, or a coach, but until they prove otherwise, it’s Creighton’s reality. Seton Hall ended the game on an 8-0 run after it was tied at 73, and that’s tough to stomach.
They Said It:
“I had a couple of open looks that the first two games I didn’t perform up to the best of my abilities. I think I had a lot of shots they weren’t expecting. My teammates and coaches did a great job of drawing up plays and getting me open. I converted some.” -Cole Huff in postgame press conference
“Definitely some positives we can take out of this…pre-season not really being predicted to finish towards the top, and we didn’t have a lot of expectations. During the middle of the season, in conference play we were really clicking. We didn’t finish so strong, but there’s definitely some things we can learn from this and take next year. At the same time, like you said, it hurts. Nobody wants to go home this early. This is what we play for.” -Cole Huff in postgame press conference
“At the end of the day a loss is a loss. It hurts to know that we were so close. Just a couple of things we could have done differently. You look back on the game, stuff is going to stick in your head until the next time we play. It’s a credit to them, too. They played really well. They made some big-time plays. We just got to get back to the drawing board this offseason and figure some things out and be ready for next year.” -Cole Huff in postgame press conference
“We probably expected Whitehead to perform at the level he performed tonight. He’s played as well as anybody in the country right now. But Carrington was the difference. I thought we did a good job on Delgado. We made Rodriguez’s catches tough in the post, which has been a big part of what they’ve done recently. And you know, we had our backs against the wall a couple of times in the first half. We came out the second half and really got back in the game and then went down 10 again. And our guys kept chipping away and kept fighting.” -Coach Greg McDermott in postgame press conference
“I couldn’t be more proud of my team. We made some mistakes late. Had a turnover on an out-of-bounds play which is a big play on a missed blockout on a free-throw. Those are the little things that add up in the end. That’s not what I want these guys to take away from this season. Our seniors Geoff Groselle and James Milliken, a year ago at this time, we weren’t playing meaningful games on February 20th. This year we were playing games that have NCAA Tournament implications. We were on the bubble at that time. That thought was a million miles away a year ago in February. So the fact that James and Geoff have led us back to the point of relevance is a credit to their leadership.
I hope that’s what they’ll take away from this experience. I hope we get an opportunity to play some more. I think we’re NIT worthy. I think a lot of people probably saw that tonight. Disappointed that we lost, but very proud of my team and very proud of where we’ve come from a year ago.” -Coach Greg McDermott in postgame press conference
“We played a lot of close games, and came up short in a lot of them. But to be picked where we were, we had a chance to play for third place with a couple of games left in conference play. We went on the road to play a good Providence team, and we saw how good they were today, and lost by four. We saw how good Xavier was today too, and we lost by five. This team has fought. I’m proud of them for that. We also talked in the locker room afterward about how little things matter. If there’s a lesson we need to take from this loss, that’s it. You don’t know where a blown assignment, or a scouting report mistake, or a missed block-out, or a turnover will end up costing you the game when you look back it at. Those are the things we need to take away.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“As I told my coaching staff, I can’t believe we’re here already. The season has gone by so fast. And as in life, when things go fast, it’s usually because you enjoy the people you’re around. I have an unbelievable coaching staff, one of the best in the country. Our support staff, from our trainers to our strength coaches to our student managers to our secretary — everybody’s done a phenomenal job. The guys have continued to work, and have really had to fight some adversity with injuries this year. I’m really, really proud of everybody. I’m disappointed that we don’t have an opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament, because I think we could make some noise if we could get there. But I hope we get an NIT invite, because this team deserves to play some more basketball.”ย -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
“You know, I haven’t thought about whether it’s NIT or nothing, in depth, yet. My sense, right now, is that it would be. Simply because Z’s probably looking at surgery and a 4-6 month recovery, Cole’s looking at surgery and if what’s wrong in that knee is what I think is wrong, it could be a four to six month deal too. You don’t want to really put that off. The Vegas tourney doesn’t even start until the end of March. That two weeks of recovery is important on the other end, as we get towards the end of summer. Those are some of the decisions we’ll have to make after talking it over with Ras and our coaching staff. We’ll decide what’s best for the team.”ย -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame
You Said It:
https://twitter.com/mue11er/status/708126855572754432
https://twitter.com/j_a_schulte/status/708140582263087104
https://twitter.com/dannyobyrne/status/708140984652013568
https://twitter.com/SG_4032/status/708145102749720576