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Men's Basketball

Morning After: DePaul 70, Creighton 60

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

DePaul outrebounds Creighton 37-29, and outscores them 18-8 on second-chance points. DePaul makes seven of their first nine shots, and only 15 of their final 42.

Standout Performance:

Toby Hegner plays 32 minutes, scoring 15 points on 5-12 shooting from three-point range. On a team with not many shooters, and even fewer with confidence at the moment, it was good to see the freshman find his stroke from long-range even if it took 12 shots to get there.

Recap and Analysis:

DePaul’s Forrest Robinson went 5-5 from three-point range in the first five minutes of the game, and that helped them build a 20-5 lead. For the other 35 minutes of the game, Creighton outscored the Blue Demons 55-50 — nice, but not by enough to overcome spotting their visitors from Chicago 15 points.

It was eerily reminiscent of two performances from last season. First, it reminded me of the Xavier game in Omaha, where the Musketeers made four 3’s in the first two minutes and had a 12-0 lead before anyone knew what hit them. Second, it reminded of me of Creighton in Philadelphia last January — and made me think, so this must be what it felt like to be a Villanova fan watching Ethan Wragge tear them to shreds on their home floor!

To their credit, the Bluejays fought, scrapped, and clawed their way back, and on multiple occasions in the second half made it a two possession game, got the crowd into it, and put themselves in position to try to win the game. Toby Hegner started the momentum swing on the final play of the first half, when DePaul’s Jamee Crockett picked Will Artino’s pocket and raced down court for what appeared would be a rim-rattling dunk to put an exclamation point on the half (and give his team a 16-point lead to boot). Hegner would have none of it. He raced down the floor and swatted Crockett’s shot attempt into the seats, a clean block that not only gave the crowd something to cheer about as the players went into the locker room — it was something for the players to build on.

They used it to their advantage coming out of the locker room, and six minutes into the second half, they’d cut the lead to 49-43 after a three-pointer from Hegner. They could never get any closer, despite two other instances where they trimmed the deficit to six.

It’s a shame, because the Bluejays did some good things that were obscured by the scoreboard. They shot the ball reasonably well (before a late flurry of missed threes, they were on pace for one of their better shooting halves of the past month). They had stretches where they played some really solid interior defense. They had Toby Hegner play a solid all-around game, scoring 15 points with five 3-pointers, 2 assists and that one amazing block. They got 10 points and 5 rebounds, plus some really stout defense, from Avery Dingman in perhaps his best all-around game of the year. But they had those first five minutes where they got torched by a good shooter, and that ultimately made everything else a moot point.

Quotables:

“We didn’t follow the scouting report. We knew all (Robinson) did was shoot threes, and if you look at the box score, nine of his 11 shots were threes. And if go look at his season stats, it’s the same thing — 64 of his 84 field goals are threes. We knew that. And we just got caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time.” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

“We have way too many mental breakdowns. Myself included, I mean, the entire team does. We can’t have those mental breakdowns. We can watch the film, study the film, and everything, but it all comes to not having mental breakdowns in the game.” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

“In the locker room at halftime, we were obviously disappointed in ourselves, but we had Austin and Avery saying, ‘Yo, we gotta go! We got 20 more minutes, we gotta go!’ It all comes down to what’s inside your heart. We just…had breakdowns at a bad time. We can’t have those mental breakdowns like we had at the start of the game.” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

“Practice has been going good, and in fact, these past couple of practices have probably been our best practices of the year. We know we have to come in with the mentality of ‘We have to get better today and it starts right now on the practice floor.’ Everything we do on the practice court comes over to the game court. It all works in with each other. Tomorrow will be a good day to get back in the gym and figure out our mistakes. I’m ready. I know our team is ready.” -Toby Hegner on 1620AM Postgame

“I told the team, and I told the media, this was 100% on me. I put our guys in an impossible situation to start the game. I put a lineup out there that was incapable of guarding what DePaul was going to do with the lineup they had on the floor. They went without Hamilton, which we anticipated they were going to do because they’ve won two straight games with this starting lineup, and I put our guys in spots where they weren’t capable of executing. It would have had to be perfection for them to do what we asked them to do. I should have started the game small and it’s my responsibility to figure that out before the game, not when the game’s three minutes old.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“If we’d gone with a small lineup, we probably would have put Avery at the ‘4’. And then you switch all those screens and then Robinson never gets started. But to Forrest’s credit, he made four in the last game and that was his best performance of the year. He’d been very streaky to that point. And we were worried about guarding the dribble, too, and keeping them out of the paint. As I told you in the pregame, I didn’t want to get beat on both. I didn’t want to give up threes and give up the driving lanes. I just thought we were very casual in our closeouts. On some of our stunts, we stunted and we left him before a teammate was back. Those are things that we practiced, but when you put a center in that position, and he’s not used to it, it’s the same reason Ethan Wragge would get threes when he played against centers sometimes. You put guys in spots where they’re not capable of being successful. I’ve got to figure that out before the game, and not when the game’s a few minutes old.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“To Avery’s credit, when we found out Ricky was sick this morning with the flu and wasn’t going to be able to play, he got in and really studied. I kind of gave him the package, told him what we were going to run, here’s the out-of-bounds plays — I’m not going to make you responsible for all of them, but here’s the package we’ll run, so make sure you know it. And he’s never done that in his career. So to his credit, I thought he was in the right spot most of the time, I thought he played hard, and a couple of those fouls were on offensive rebounds or where he was trying to make hustle plays which we need him to make. He played with energy and enthusiasm tonight.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We were already one down with Ricky and then we lost Geoff — he came out with the flu, too, during the first half, and then didn’t even come back out after halftime — obviously you hope that doesn’t spread through your team like wildfire. Two of our top 10 guys are out right now. We’ll see how they feel tomorrow.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“As the game went on, they switched some screens up and made it tougher for Austin to get good looks, but I thought for the most part he got pretty good looks. And as a team, outside of some turnovers in the first half, I thought our looks were pretty decent. Our gameplan was to go inside. We thought we had an advantage in there. And when we got it in there, we fumbled it or they tipped it from behind. I think we had turnovers the first couple of times we threw it in to Geoff and maybe the first few times we threw it in to Zach as well. That can’t happen. They’ve got to be better.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Those guys are hurting right now. I’m telling you, they care about this program. They care about carrying the torch of Creighton Basketball forward. This is eating them up inside. I’ve got to try to get their heads back to where they need to be because obviously we have a very good team coming in here on Saturday.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“In the second half, I thought we made the extra pass. In the first half, too often we took the first good one. Sometimes, when you’re on a roll, that’s OK. When you’re struggling to score, or they’re rolling and you’re down 12 or 14 like we were, I think you maybe gotta try to fight for a little better shot. The challenge with this team is, what is that next option? There’s really not a guard that’s going to post up for us. DePaul ran Garrett to the post, they ran Crockett down to the post. We don’t have guards right now that are built that way. I think that will change in the future, as we move forward, but right now we don’t have ’em. So these guys are either going to have to pull-up and take shots, take threes, attack the rim some. But again, we’re attacking the rim against bigger wings, so some of those are getting thrown out of there. That is what it is right now. We just have to be more efficient with what we do. That’s what we have to try to continue to work towards.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We practiced really well the last two days. And we played really well on our road trip in stretches. Tonight we played well in stretches. But this team’s ability to put 40 minutes of basketball together has been a huge challenge this year. They’re as frustrated with it as I am, as the fans are, or as anybody else is. They’re going back and rewatching these games as well, not just on their own, but with me. That’s tough to swallow sometimes. It’ll be our challenge as a coaching staff to make sure they’re picked back up tomorrow and get some work done.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“If you look at our season so far, when Austin plays well, we play well. The second half against Oklahoma, he was outstanding and we got a great win. At Nebraska, he goes 7-11, he controls the game, he’s great defensively, and we get a big win there. We’re asking him to do a lot. I totally recognize that. I think he’s capable of it. I think he relishes the role that he’s in. That’s why he’s in the gym all the time. We got back late Saturday night, I’m up in my office at about 11:15pm, there’s a snowstorm outside, and all of a sudden the lights pop on in the gym. I look down, and there’s Austin and Isaiah getting shots up at 11:00 at night coming off a loss earlier in the day. These guys really, really care. They’ve never been, especially guys like Austin, Will, and Avery, they’ve never been in this situation. It’s my responsibility to try to navigate them through it.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

And Now, Here’s What You Had to Say:

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