Bluejay Beat Podcast:
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Recap & Analysis:
Gonzaga has spent the entire season making good teams look terrible and great teams look average. Entering the game at 28-0 and the winners of an NCAA Division 1 record 25 straight games by double digits, they had the #1 adjusted offensive efficiency in D1, and the #7 adjusted defensive efficiency according to KenPom. No one has figured out a way to hang around with them, much less beat them.
Creighton’s defensive plan seemed like it could work. They felt like they were most vulnerable in the paint, where a pair of All-Americans in Jalen Suggs and Drew Timme have been nearly automatic, so they packed the paint. They assigned Denzel Mahoney to guard the Bulldogs’ third All-American, Corey Kispert, on the perimeter. The byproduct of that strategy? The other two players are essentially dared to hit shots. But when those two players are Joel Ayayi and Andrew Nembhard, your plan can look foolish pretty quick. And it did.
Ayayi and Nembhard made five of their first seven 3-pointers as Gonzaga built a 22-12 lead. The Jays had little choice at that point but to throw out their gameplan, and with their defense stretched out to take away Ayayi and Nembhard, the result was exactly what Creighton feared it might be: the Bulldogs three stars took over the game inside. They finished 25-of-33 on two-pointers (75.8%). They had 50 points in the paint.
“We tried to really protect the paint early in the game and kind of turn them into a jump shooting team, at least in transition,” Greg McDermott said. “To their credit, Nembhard in particular really made us pay for that, him and Ayayi really did a great job hitting some of those shots, and that really kind of forced us to stretch out a little bit more. Once you get stretched out against them, you’re asking for trouble because of Timme’s ability to play on the block.”
Gonzaga coach Mark Few said his guys had seen opponents do that earlier this year. “I think, probably when you guard us, you’ve got to pick your poison a little bit,” he said. “At this point in the season, it’s not like there’s things that you really haven’t seen. I think our guys get different schemes that people choose, and then they adjust accordingly. I thought we started moving the pieces pretty good and taking one, two, three extra passes to get to the next action, and we were finding a lot of success on that second action.”
Creighton was left to try and outscore the highest scoring team in America. They could not, at least not all day. For a while the Jays made things extremely interesting — a 13-5 run fueled by Marcus Zegarowski and Christian Bishop cut the Gonzaga lead to two at 27-25 with 10:18 to play. After Zegarowski’s third 3-pointer without a miss, he had 11 of the Jays’ first 25 points, shooting 4-of-5 from the floor.
The game turned over the next 60 seconds.
On Gonzaga’s next offensive possession after Zegarowski’s three, Bishop picked up his first foul defending a shot at rim. Then Bishop was called for a charging foul on the other end, and he headed to the bench with two fouls. The Jays collectively missed 10 of their next 11 shots with him out of the game, and Gonzaga built a 37-27 lead.
Ryan Kalkbrenner played some of his best defensive minutes of the NCAA Tournament in Bishop’s absence, but his offensive struggles continued, encapsulated perfectly by one sequence with 6:18 to go in the half. Mitch Ballock missed a three, and Kalkbrenner grabbed an offensive rebound. Damien Jefferson missed the second chance basket, and Kalkbrenner grabbed another offensive rebound. This time he put the ball up himself, and also missed. A nearly 50-second possession ended with no points.
A couple of possessions later, Kalkbrenner missed another layup. Needing a breather, McDermott opted to sub in Jacob Epperson rather than go back to Bishop; after the under-4 media timeout, Bishop returned to the floor and almost immediately scored on the block. But the damage was done and Creighton would be chasing the separation Gonzaga created in his absence the rest of the day.
It was kind of miraculous that the game was as close as it was. Mitch Ballock, Denzel Mahoney and Damien Jefferson combined to shoot 0-for-8 from three-point range in the first half and 6-of-19 overall — they had 12 points. Gonzaga’s fourth and fifth options, Ayayi and Nembhard, were a combined 8-of-13 overall with 21 points.
And sure enough, the game wasn’t that close for very long. The Jays opened the second half 1-of-7 from the field, and after four minutes Gonzaga opened up a 51-35 lead. Game over. The Bulldogs led by as many as 27, 80-53, and finished off the Jays’ season 83-65.
It was a similar score to 2014 when Baylor ended another Bluejay era with a 85-55 thumping, but the similarities end there. Creighton was a 3.5 point favorite over the Bears. It was a second round game, and the loss not only ended their season, it meant that breaking the Sweet 16 drought would have to wait. It hurt deeply that one of the most beloved Bluejay teams in program history had squandered their moment and ended their time on the Hilltop without achieving their biggest goal.
The 2020-21 Bluejays leave no such emptiness. This group won a regular season Big East title and advanced to the Sweet 16. They won 46 games the last two seasons, including a 9-5 record against rated teams. They rose as high as #7 in the AP Top 25 and spent the entire 2020-21 season ranked, the first time that’s ever happened at CU. They’re instantly one of the greatest, most accomplished teams in Creighton’s storied history. A decisive loss in their final game — one in which they were 13.5 point underdogs — does nothing to change that legacy.
But the sadness over the end of an era is exactly the same as that morning in 2014 when Jays fans came to grips with the fact that they’d seen the last of Grant Gibbs, Jahenns Manigat, Ethan Wragge and Doug McDermott in the White & Blue. We’ve (almost certainly) seen the last of Damien Jefferson, Denzel Mahoney, and Mitch Ballock in the White & Blue, and probably seen the last of Marcus Zegarowski. It will be a while before we see team like this again.
“I know they’re hurting right now, but I hope, when this is over, they can look back and appreciate and celebrate the magnitude of what they’ve accomplished the last two years,” McDermott said. “That’s what I told them in the locker room. Don’t be sad that it’s over, but smile because it happened.”
Key Stats:
We outlined four key areas that the Jays needed to excel in for them to pull the upset. They did not succeed in three of them, and did not capitalize on the fourth.
They were 5-of-23 (21.7%) on three-pointers, their second-worst shooting night of the season. They only got to line eight times, and made 4-of-8.
They turned Gonzaga over 16 times, but could only turn them into 14 points, as they failed to capitalize in transition — they were officially credited with zero fast break points.
They did do a good job on the boards — Gonzaga missed 23 shots and only had an offensive rebound on six of them (26%). But the Jays couldn’t capitalize on all those defensive boards.
And finally, they did not stay out of foul trouble, specifically Christian Bishop who picked up two early fouls and sat for nearly 10 decisive minutes in the first half.
In Creighton’s last two losses of the season — to Georgetown in the Big East title game and to Gonzaga in the Sweet 16 — Damien Jefferson, Denzel Mahoney, and Mitch Ballock combined to shoot 2-for-15 and 3-for-20 from three-point range, respectively. Yikes. Over the last five games (versus UConn and Georgetown in the Big East tourney, plus the NCAA Tournament) Ballock was 7-of-29 (24%) from three-point range, Jefferson was 2-of-17 (12%) and Mahoney was (7-of-32, 22%).
How’d they manage to get this far?
Marcus Zegarowski averaged 17.2 points and 3.8 assists over those same five games, while shooting 14-of-28 (50%) from three-point range and 20-of-37 (54%) from two-point range in 36.8 minutes per game. All-American numbers from their best, most important player.
Christian Bishop had a terrible night against Georgetown (two points, 1-of-6 shooting, 0-of-4 from the line with four rebounds). In the other four games during that span? 12.5 points and 9.5 rebounds per game, while shooting 23-of-31 (74.1%) from the field.
