Bluejay Beat Podcast:
On November 9, 2007, a Creighton team with nine players who had never suited up for the team before in a regular season game dug themselves an early hole in the season opener. Over the first nine minutes, they missed 14 of their first 17 shots, turned it over five times, and were consistently beaten on defense. DePaul built a 23-6 lead before the young Bluejays took a deep breath, settled in, and staged a wild comeback fueled by Chad Millard draining three-pointers and P’Allen Stinnett throwing down highlight reel dunks.
I thought a lot about that game last night in the aftermath of Creighton’s 90-77 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff, because the parallels are uncanny.
Exactly 14 years later, TO THE DAY, Creighton once again opened the season with a young, inexperienced team. This one features 10 players that had never suited up for the Jays in a regular season game before. And much like that 2007 opener, Arkansas-Pine Bluff built a 26-11 lead by the 9:33 mark of the first half. Over the first ten minutes and change, Creighton had one stretch with four turnovers in 10 possessions, and a separate stretch with just two points over 12 possessions. UAPB ripped off a 17-0 run, frustrating the large opening night crowd who were pleading for Greg McDermott to call timeout either to apply a tournaquet to the bleeding or coach up his young players in the moment. Instead, he opted to let them play through it, and figure things out on the fly — a decision that will probably expedite their growth, but that was immensely difficult to watch as a spectator.
“I’ve blown the whistle in practice in the middle of live play,” McDermott said in his press conference, “and I said to (my staff), I can’t blow the whistle Tuesday — I can’t stop it. Sometimes you’ve just got to play through that stuff.”
At one point, they missed three 3-pointers on the same trip down the floor. All totaled, they were 0-for-14 on threes to start the game. Considering they had a turnover on 35% of their possessions at the same time they were 0-for on threes, there was a sense that maybe the growing curve was steeper for this group than previously thought. Jays fans had to wonder what would happen if they did this against Villanova. And hoped that by the time the Wildcats come to Omaha five weeks from now, the team has grown past this.
The thing about young teams, though, is that the roller coaster climbs just as quickly as it descends. It was true in that 2007 opener. And it was true Tuesday night.
After Pine Bluff built that 26-11 lead, CU had just one turnover over the final nine minutes of the first half. They scored on 12 of their last 15 trips down the floor as they settled in offensively. But they didn’t cut into the lead much because defensively, they were still a mess — UAPB scored on each of their last seven possessions, too. The Golden Lions’ Trey Sampson had 20 first-half points and seven rebounds while being guarded primarily by Ryan Kalkbrenner and KeyShawn Feazell, neither of whom had any answer for him.
“In our guys defense, we had zero film on Pine Bluff. So really except for an idea of the kind of player Shawn Williams is, we had no idea what they were going to do offensively, defensively, there was nothing,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We went into it blind and adjusted on the fly, and it probably took us too long to make the adjustment on Sampson. I wanted to try and play Ryan and KeyShawn and keep our rotation, but at halftime we decided we had to make a change.”
That change came at halftime, when they decided to try Alex O’Connell on him, and tweak their ball screen coverages to limit Sampson’s pick-and-pop opportunities. It led to stops, those stops fueled the fast break, where the Jays’ transition dunks electrified the crowd, and the fast break pace wore down a UAPB team playing just six players. It all worked together like a symphony to turn a 47-38 UAPB halftime lead into a 57-55 Creighton lead just five minutes into the second half.
O’Connell was the catalyst. In 55 seconds of game time, he assisted on a layup to Kalkbrenner that made it 53-42, cleared a defensive rebound that led to a transition jumper for Ryan Hawkins and cut the lead to 53-44, and then exploded for a transition dunk that cut the lead to 53-46. That dunk forced UAPB to call timeout, but with the CHI Health Center crowd rocking, the Bluejays flying around both ends of the floor, and a gassed Pine Bluff squad gasping for air, a Bluejay comeback felt inevitable.
“Alex got physical with Sampson and forced him to take tougher shots than he did in the first half,” point guard Ryan Nembhard said, “and that was the biggest key to us turning the game around.”
But that was the tactical change. There was also a mindset change.
“Defense. Defense, defense, defense,” Arthur Kaluma said of the coaches’ emphasis in the locker room at half. “In the first half, our rotations were slow, we were timid, and R2 was telling everyone ‘We cannot lose our first home game.’ I feel like that flipped a switch for everybody. We were like, yeah, there’s no way we’re losing tonight. So we came back out, and turned up our defensive intensity.”
After Kaluma drained a three, O’Connell jumped a passing lane and took the ball coast to coast for another jam, making it 55-51.
Kaluma blocked a shot on the next defensive trip, and O’Connell scored on a layup to cut the deficit to two. And then Kaluma blew the roof off the building with a thunderous dunk in transition where he exploded past and through four defenders, cocking the ball behind his head and slamming it home with one hand. It tied the game at 55, and immediately drew comparisons to another famous dunk from a long time ago, which I’m not discouraging.
“Pine Bluff had just taken a bad shot, and I remember grabbing the board and thinking ‘We’ve been running the whole game and they’re starting to get tired,’” Kaluma said in describing the play. “So I’m running down the court, I hand it off to R2, and tell him ‘Right back, right back!’ He attacks, draws the defense, and kicks it right back to me. I saw the lane open up, and I thought to myself, ‘I have to put on a show. Gotta put on a show!’ So I tried dunking it as hard as possible!”
The dunk capped a 15-2 run where the Jays had scored on 19 of their last 24 possessions (!) including eight straight made shots (!!) and erased a double digit lead in seemingly the blink of an eye. Nembhard then gave the Jays the lead on a bounce pass that he turned into a layup, and followed it with another jumper.
And then O’Connell took the ball coast for coast for another dunk, dribbling it behind his back on the way. It was 61-57 Bluejays, and they never looked back.
O’Connell and Ryan Hawkins hit back-to-back threes, Hawkins converted a three-point play, and as the game clock ticked under 10 minutes, the Bluejays had turned a double-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. At that moment, they’d made 14 of their first 16 shot attempts in the second half. They’d eventually go ahead by as many as 17, with that lead coming courtesy of (fittingly) a three from O’Connell.
“During our big run this place got rowdy. It got really loud in here,” Nembhard said. “You could immediately understand how Bluejay teams go on huge runs in this building. We fed off it and started playing even faster, and things opened up for us.”
Kaluma agreed. “Crazy atmosphere in here. I love playing in this building.”
Key Stats:
Creighton had two players with double-doubles, as Ryan Hawkins notched 16 points and 11 rebounds, and Ryan Nembhard had 15 points and 10 assists. Remarkably, they nearly had a third player join them, as Arthur Kaluma had 15 points and 8 rebounds.
Also from Rob Anderson: Kaluma joined Doug McDermott as the only Bluejay to have at least 15 points and five boards in his debut since 1973. And Hawkins’ 11 boards were second-most since 1970 in a debut, trailing only Damien Jefferson’s 12 in 2018.