“Those aren’t teardrops falling in Omaha, those are tears of joy.” -John Bishop, Radio Voice of the Bluejays

[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Christian Bishop had another double-double with 12 points and 15 rebounds, and becomes just the third Bluejay ever to record back-to-back double-doubles in NCAA Tournament play. The others? Paul Silas and Chad Gallagher. And those 15 rebounds were one shy of the program record for most rebounds in a tourney game, behind Bob Harstad’s 16 in the first round win over New Mexico State in 1991.

Marcus Zegarowski finished with 20 points, three rebounds and two assists and facilitated one of the most important victories in Creighton program history.

The Jays defense is the real story here, and the difference between this CU squad and all the ones who preceded them in the tourney. UC Santa Barbara had their fourth-lowest point total of the year (63 points), and their fifth-lowest offensive efficiency (approximately 1.0 point per possession). Ohio had their lowest point total of the season (58 points) and their worst offensive efficiency (0.82 points per possession). That’s the first time they’d been held under 1.0 since the regular season finale on February 27 — which was only the second time it had happened the entire season.

Jason Preston played all 40 minutes, and was 100% locked down. He scored four points on 1-of-10 shooting and missed all three 3-pointers that he attempted. Ben Vander Plas played 38 minutes and had just nine points, shooting 3-of-12 overall and 1-of-6 on threes with a whopping six turnovers.

CU’s offense was nothing special in these two games, but their defense carried them into the second weekend.

Just as we all predicted.

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Recap & Analysis:

Creighton’s once-commanding 21-point lead was teetering on the brink. They’d gone cold at the wrong time, and with just over two minutes to play, Ohio had cut it to single digits. Panic was setting in among a fanbase conditioned to expect the worst in March Madness. At that precise moment, Marcus Zegarowski stabbed a stake into the heart of those demons of March past. He split a double-team with a dribble drive and nailed a jumper to end a three minute scoring drought. Then as Ohio’s Jason Preston tried to score quickly in transition, Zegarowski picked him up at halfcourt and shadowed him all the way to the rim, where he blocked the shot.

In the biggest moment of the biggest game of the season (so far), Creighton’s best player put the team on his back and carried them across the finish line. Zegarowski has long talked about being aware of CU’s history of heartbreak in March, and his desire to be on the first Bluejay team to make a deep run. This was him making sure that run continued for another day.

“Everybody’s talking about a lot of good guards. You know, McLaughlin Saturday and Preston today and how good they are and what they mean to their team,” Greg McDermott said. “They’re missing the boat on the guy we’ve got on our team…He wins, and he won when he was in high school, he won in AAU, and he’s won in college. He’s got a grit and a toughness about him that you don’t see often.”

As the final horn sounded, Zegarowski jumped onto the scorer’s table to point to the crowd of Bluejay fans in attendance at Hinkle Fieldhouse, his screams of joy echoed by CU fans around the globe who have been waiting decades for this moment. 14 CU teams had made the NCAA tournament since the field’s expansion in 1985. Every single one of them were eliminated before the end of the first weekend, including six times where they won in the First Round only to lose in the Second.

Teams that were among the most decorated in CU lore — the 2002-03 squad led by senior Kyle Korver, the 2006-07 MVC title team with seniors Nate Funk and Anthony Tolliver, the 2013-14 team with seniors Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs, Ethan Wragge and Jahenns Manigat — none of them could break through.

“It is hard to express how much this means to Creighton,” Nick Bahe said in an emotional postgame commentary on the radio broadcast. Choking back tears of joy, Bahe continued. “For so long, it’s felt like…we all know how good this program is. But the world didn’t know. This is what was missing. This is what was always thrown back in your face. ‘You haven’t been to a Sweet 16, you’re not that good.’

To think of all the great coaches and great players who have felt such great heartache because they couldn’t get over the hump. The sad feeling in the locker rooms after the second round of the NCAA Tournament. I’ve been in too many of those locker rooms. Too many of ’em. It just feels so GOOD that the world knows about Creighton basketball like this.

I keep coming back to this image of chopping down a tree. It’s not one chop that takes it down. It’s a thousand little chops. It starts all the way back with guys like Paul Silas and Benoit Benjamin chopping at that thing…from Ryan Sears to Tom and Rick Apke to Bob Harstad and Kevin McKenna, Nate Funk, Anthony Tolliver, Larry House, Kyle Korver, Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs, Jahenns Manigat, Ethan Wragge, Khyri Thomas, Marcus Foster, and it is these dudes that did it.

And as someone that put on the uniform, and has shed blood sweat and tears for this program for going on 20 years now either as a player, or a coach, or a broadcaster, my prevailing feeling right now is I couldn’t be more happy that it was Greg McDermott with his hands on the axe to chop that tree all the way down. It was Marcus Zegarowski and Mitch Ballock and Christian Bishop and Damien Jefferson and Denzel Mahoney and Shereef Mitchell with their hands on that axe. Those are some bad ass dudes. I always have to be unbiased but to hell with that right now. I’m so freaking happy for Creighton.”

***

Creighton missed their first five shots of the game, finally getting on the scoreboard with an alley-oop dunk by Christian Bishop. Their first lead at 13-11 came courtesy of a Marcus Zegarowski three-pointer. The Jays were a little slow coming out of the gates because, according to Greg McDermott, Ohio’s ball screen defense was a little different than they’d planned for. But once they settled in against the Bobcat defense, they began to push the pace. And they started to wear down the Bobcats.

“I felt they were a little bit tired. I sensed that, and I think our guys sensed that,” McDermott said. “We’re used to playing that way, and while there’s some teams in their conference that play fast, I’m not sure they play as fast as we do. So we were able to continue to put pressure on them in transition, and that created some mistakes on their part, and we were able to get loose and hit some shots during that stretch.”

With the score tied at 19, Creighton got back-to-back dunks from Bishop. Damien Jefferson created the first one by driving into the paint, collapsing a double team onto himself, then dumping it off to Bishop. The game headed into a media timeout after that dunk, and the look on Jefferson and Bishop’s faces said it all — they were about to take this game over and they knew it.

Less than a minute later, Bishop and Mitch Ballock executed a perfectly timed alley-oop. Or a “man’s jam”, as Ian Eagle called it on the TV broadcast. Whatever you want to call it, Bishop’s dunks were the beginning of the end for Ohio — they jump started a 10-3 run that turned that 19-19 tie into a 29-22 Bluejay lead.

It eventually grew to a 20-5 run that gave Creighton their biggest halftime lead ever in an NCAA Tournament game, 39-24. Your studs have to be studs to advance in March Madness, and Creighton’s were doing just that. Zegarowski had 13 first half points on 5-of-9 shooting and a perfect 3-of-3 on threes with zero turnovers in 19 minutes. Two of those threes came in a 60-second stretch late in the half. The first one opened up a double-digit lead, 34-24:

And on the second one he pump-faked an Ohio defender into the air and out of the way, then scooted one step over and buried a wide-open three.

Bishop and Jefferson had eight points apiece. Mitch Ballock was scoreless but had three assists and a steal. Denzel Mahoney had seven points but more importantly had spent 16 minutes harassing Jason Preston, Ohio’s star point guard, allowing just a single point from the free throw line and an 0-for-5 shooting line.

“Jason is very talented, sees the floor so well. We didn’t want to allow him to be a passer and a scorer, so I thought Denzel’s work on him, on the ball, Christian and Ryan in the ball screen coverage was really good,” McDermott said. “And just like the Santa Barbara game, the change-up going from Denzel to Shereef, that’s a hard one to follow as an offensive player, when all of a sudden you’ve got a big, strong physical defender on you in Denzel with great anticipation skills, and now you come in with this little guy that’s going to get under you and poke at the ball and make every dribble difficult, that’s hard to adjust to.”

As the second half began, Ballock got on the scoreboard with a long three-pointer. A set play designed to get their sharpshooter an open look, and he drained it.

A few minutes later, they opened up a 21-point lead with back-to-back threes from Jefferson and Zegarowski. Desperate for a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, Ohio began using a full-court baseline to baseline press. Teams have been hesitant to do that long-term against the Jays because of their skill in the open floor, but it energized the Bobcats and they started to chip away at the lead.

Creighton had an answer every single time. When they got it to 15 at 58-43, Ballock provided Exhibit A in why pressing the Jays is not a long-term answer. He broke the press and lobbed an alley-oop to Bishop. Timeout Ohio.

Ohio made one last-gasp effort, cutting it to 65-56, before Zegarowski closed the show and sent the Bluejays to the Sweet 16.

“It’s a phenomenal feeling,” Zegarowski said. “This is a two-year kind of thing for us. We got it taken away from us last year, and everything we’ve been through this year is for moments like this, and I’m happy we capitalized and came through. But you know, we’re not done yet. This is just the start.”

Here’s how the moment sounded on Bluejay Radio with John Bishop and Nick Bahe.

And here’s how the celebration in the locker room looked.

 

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