Bluejay Beat Wrap-Up Show:
Recap & Analysis:
What could have been.
Long after the pain of this loss has subsided, that will be the lingering feeling from Friday’s 69-59 loss to Kansas State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Creighton was facing a Wildcat team without their best player, 6’10” Dean Wade. 16-seed UMBC upset the #1 seeded Virginia to blow a hole in the South Region. The path to the Sweet 16 was wide open and theirs for the taking in a way it’s never been for Creighton, and with upsets happening elsewhere in the region, they’d have had a puncher’s chance of advancing a lot further than that.
But just as they did so many times in the days of the Missouri Valley Conference, Bruce Weber and Chris Lowery were there to stand in the way, to beat back a high-powered Bluejay offense with brute force and physicality. For years, their SIU teams befuddled otherwise great teams coached by Dana Altman, who never seemed to be able to solve the riddle of those Saluki clubs. At one point they went four entire seasons without beating the Salukis, racking up eight straight defeats during a time where the Jays fielded perennial NCAA Tournament caliber teams and dominated everyone else in the MVC.
Weber and Lowery’s K-State team was tenacious from the tip on Friday, playing with a relentless energy on both ends of the floor and figuratively punching the Bluejays in the mouth right at the outset. Point guard Kamau Stokes scored the Wildcats’ first seven points, and they took a 10-2 lead after a three from big man Makol Mawien. Their defense sped the Jays up, forcing them into rushed shots and poor decisions. And after setting the tone in that initial stretch, they controlled the rest of the game, answering every Creighton run with a big shot, or a big defensive play, to keep the Jays at arms’ length.
They rotated defenders on Marcus Foster, flying around him to cut off driving lanes, keep him from getting clean looks, and mostly, prevent him from catching the ball in the first place. He took just four shots in the first half, scoring zero points. Could he have been more aggressive? Sure. Rewatching the film, there were multiple opportunities for him to put his head down and barrel to the rim, where he would have either created a shot for himself or been fouled, instead of swinging the ball around the perimeter to find a shot for someone else. How ironic that after all the talk this week about keeping Foster from turning this into a personal revenge game and taking 25 shots, the Jays’ best opportunity to win might well have been for Foster to do just that.
Still, their defense was good enough to keep them in the game, and if not for a couple of huge shots, might have been enough to win it. After trailing by as many as nine points in the first half, they went on a 10-4 run over the final four minutes to close to within three. They did it the way they’ve done it all year — a Khyri Thomas steal leading to a transition layup. A stop, rebound, and three-pointer in transition, this time by Davion Mintz. And great ball movement in the halfcourt, with one player passing up a good shot (Foster) for a great shot (a three by Mitch Ballock). With nine seconds to go, it was 29-26 and for a brief moment, the complexion of the game changed. The Jays were charging into halftime on a big momentum shifting run, having withstood the Wildcats’ surge and setting themselves up to take over in the second half.
It was a brief moment. As the horn sounded, Mike McGuirl launched a three-pointer from the “March Madness” logo at center court, and it went in. The same Mike McGuirl who had scored 13 total points all season, and was such a non-factor he wasn’t even discussed in our otherwise thorough Pregame Primer scouting report. Suddenly, it was K-State taking momentum (and a six point lead) into the locker rooms, and the slumped shoulders of the Bluejays as they headed off the floor told the story.
Early in the second half, Ballock scored seven straight points — a pair of free throws after driving with purpose to the rim and drawing a foul, a stone-cold three pointer from the corner, and a rebound-turned-fastbreak layup. After a fastbreak layup by Thomas moments later, it was 37-35 K-State, and Weber’s Wildcats took timeout to regroup. They’d score on back-to-back possessions to prevent the Jays from taking the lead, and then after a three-pointer from Ty-Shon Alexander cut the deficit to 42-39, used a 9-2 run to put the game away for good. That run, featuring five points from second-leading scorer Barry Brown, resulted in a 51-41 lead for K-State with 10 minutes to play. Creighton was never closer than seven the rest of the way.
And so another March Madness ends in another Creighton disappointment.
Making their fifth NCAA tourney appearance in Greg McDermott’s eight seasons as head coach, and 12th appearance in the last 20 years, the Bluejays once again failed to get out of the first weekend — and for the seventh time during that stretch, failed to win a single game. The opponent was different, but the game unfolded in a manner all too similar to Bluejay fans unlucky enough to have witnessed most or all of those disappointments. A ton of missed three pointers from their top scorers. A slow start that dug an early hole they could never get out of. An opponent playing like their hair was on fire, and using that infectious energy to fuel them on both ends of the floor.
Much like the days following their infamous 85-55 loss to Baylor, CU’s elusive Sweet 16 has never looked further away. If anything, the pain of this one stings even more acutely, because of the knowledge that Kansas State will now play 16th-seeded UMBC — not the top overall seed and nearly-unbeatable Virginia Cavaliers — for the right to advance.
The Doug McDermott Era ended with three first round wins but no trips to the second weekend of the tourney. This era, featuring perhaps three future NBA’ers, now ends with zero NCAA tourney wins at all.
When will “next year” become “this year” for Creighton in the NCAA Tournament? I’m not sure, and for the first time in this 20-year run of tourney appearances, I’m also not sure “next year” is even on the horizon. When the answer to continual early exits in March is a repeated chorus that the matchup wasn’t favorable, or that the opponent simply had a better day, or that your shooters just struggled against their defense, perhaps it’s time to look in the mirror.
Key Stats:
Creighton’s 59 points match a season low. The Bluejays shoot 33.8% from the floor, their worst percentage in two seasons. And they turned it over 13 times on 67 possessions, for an atrocious 0.881 points per possession.
CU attempts 18 more shots than KSU thanks to 10 more offensive boards than KSU had, and makes the exact same number of three-pointers (nine). But 34 of Creighton’s 68 shots come from behind the arc, and they attempt just five free throws. Conversely, just 19 of K-State’s 50 shots were threes, and they got to the line 25 times thanks to a more concentrated effort to put the ball on the floor and force CU to stop dribble penetration.
Creighton has now lost three straight NCAA Tournament games, and has not had a lead since a 3-2 edge early in the Baylor game in 2014. In those three games, they’ve made just 21 of 81 three-pointers (25.9%) yet 43% of their shots have come from behind the arc — meaning they’ve taken far more threes as a percentage of their shot attempts than usual, and made far fewer of them. There’s a lot of reasons for the three losses, but that’s a pretty glaring one.
Standout Performance:
Freshman Mitch Ballock was the Jays most productive player, and it wasn’t particularly close. He took the most shots (14), had the most rebounds (8), scored the most points (16), made two of their four total free throws, and had a steal in 32 minutes. If there’s a silver lining, it’s this: Ballock finished his freshman season with a string of good-to-great performances, and capped it off with a solid game in the NCAA Tournament. And if there’s hope for ending this run of futility in March, letting Ballock lead the way is a good place to start.
They Said It:
HEAD COACH GREG McDERMOTT
Opening statement
“Congratulations to Kansas State. I thought they played a heck of a game. Defensively, we were very disruptive, especially early in the game that forced us into some uncharacteristic decisions. Rather than maybe using their pressure against them, we probably fell into the trap of trying to beat it too early in the possession. We probably didn’t get as good as shots as we’d like, especially early in the game. Defensively, they had 32 points at the half. They hit two threes as the shot clock was running down. Their center, who’s made two all year, hits one. I really feel like defensively, we really did what we needed to do to be in a good position. We just weren’t very good offensively, and K-State certainly had a lot to do with that.”
GUARD MITCH BALLOCK
On K-State’s defense
“They came out, they pressed us a little bit, they got up in us and it took us a while to get comfortable in the game. Offensively, we just didn’t have it tonight. I felt like, I don’t really know what we shot from the field, but it couldn’t have been too good. We just didn’t have it offensively, but credit their defense. They were up in us and played us really hard so respect to them.
“We talked about it all week that they were going to get up in us and be physical on the ball screens and physical in the gaps and just be strong with the ball and come off ball screens. Nothing really surprised us, we just kind of, I don’t know, we didn’t execute the game plan offensively.”
FORWARD TOBY HEGNER
On K-State’s ability to make tough shots
“You have to give Kansas State a lot of credit. They made a lot of tough shots when they needed to. I felt like we were in the right spot a lot of the time. Sometimes tough shots go in and you have to give credit to them. I wish the best for them.”
GUARD KHYRI THOMAS
On the turning point of the game
“Our momentum began to pick up around at the end of the first half we got into about a six-point lead. Then we came out, threw a little punch, and they just, you know, they really just executed what they were trying to do real well.”
On whether he’ll turn pro or return to school
“I’m not sure, I honestly don’t know. I’ll probably have a meeting with Mac and see from there. I haven’t even thought about it to be honest.”
You Said It:
(Because I don’t really want to look back through hours of tweets during and after last night’s game, we’ll instead try to leave this on a somewhat positive note by sharing some tweets from players and coaches in the aftermath of the loss.)
https://twitter.com/JohnBishop71/status/974840923753517056