Just three days after Pop Isaacs scored 27 points in a thrilling win over #1 Kansas, we learned that his season was over. The hip that was surgically repaired over the summer had continued to bother him, and waiting to do something about it was not an option.
“It was severe to the point that there could be some long term impacts if Pop tried to grind out the season, and obviously his health has to be priority number one,” Greg McDermott said in a pregame interview with John Bishop. “Pop hasn’t played in enough games, so a medical red shirt is certainly an option and something that I think will happen. But we have to get the hip fixed.”
Second on the team in scoring (16.3 points per game), assists (3.9 per game) and 3-pointers (2.9 per game on a 38.3% clip), the loss of Isaacs is a lot to replace on the stat sheet alone. But more than that, it’s his ability to be a secondary ball handler alongside Steven Ashworth, his willingness to take tough shots in pressure situations, and veteran experience that are almost impossible to replace from an intangible standpoint.
So you can understand the despair from some corners of Bluejay fandom on social media — especially given Creighton’s history of season-ending injuries to star players derailing promising seasons over the past 20 years. Whatever you felt about their long-term prognosis this season without Isaacs, it figured to be a struggle initially at the very least. And sure enough, with 7:53 to go in the first half the Jays trailed UNLV 22-21. The Rebels had made 9-of-15 from the floor to that point, freshman Jackson McAndrew was in the locker room with an ankle injury, and walk-on Shane Thomas was on the floor. It was not going well.
But then their defense flipped the game around. They closed the half on an 18-5 run to take a 39-27 lead into the locker room, then opened the second half on a 10-0 run — in roughly 11 minutes of game time spanning both halves, it was a 28-5 run. That one-point deficit had turned into a 22-point lead. And in so doing, they’d previewed a blueprint they might have to deploy in order to succeed without Isaacs: using defense to fuel their transition game, and letting Jamiya Neal go to work.
“I try to take pride in my defense,” Neal said on the postgame radio show. “Obviously, being one of the more athletic players on our team, I have to get us going on the defensive end. And we definitely all understand that we can go out and run. We’re going to do it. We’re very well conditioned and one of the best parts of my game is getting out in transition. We don’t want to walk up the ball, we want to see if they’re conditioned as well as we are.”
Neal then had the soundbite of the day, saying that getting downhill in transition where he can unleash his array of moves to dunk or score at the rim could bring a new definition to Creighton’s program tagline.
“It’s easier to score that way — it’s still ‘Let it fly’, we just let it fly in a different way. We fly down the court.”
After their hot start, UNLV made just 2-of-18 and missed all seven of their three-pointers. CU grabbed 14 of the 16 missed shots, further fueling their transition game.
Then in the second, Neal and Jasen Green took the game over by scoring or assisting on 13 of their first 16 points. First it was Neal, who batted a shot off the glass, hit Ryan Kalkbrenner for an easy layup, and got a steal and runout dunk.
Then Green followed up his own missed shot by batting the rebound away from a UNLV player, hitting the deck to secure the loose ball, and passing it from his back to Neal who scored at the rim — and drew the foul. If there was one play to sum up the energy and hustle the Jays showcased in this one, it was that play.
Neal said in the press conference afterward that their adjustments in the huddle when they were down 22-21 were fairly simple. “Talking a little more, and bringing a little bit more grit,” he said. “Everybody was like ‘OK, I’m going to guard my yard and guard my man.’ When we take that approach and we lock in and we play as a team and we guard our man and we help each other out, we look good on defense.”
Creighton’s biggest lead was 23, but UNLV did make a push to get back into the game — aided in large part by the Jays committing six turnovers on their next nine possessions, including three from Neal.
“Sometimes Jamiya needs to rein it in just a little bit,” McDermott said. “There’s some crazy stuff that he does, but that’s what makes him who he is, too. You don’t want to take that out of his game, because he’s really electric in transition. He’s got a lot of different finishes in transition. He’s so fast and so explosive that he can get to the rim and draw help and then find some teammates as well. We have to find a balance of when that is to our advantage and when it puts him in a terrible situation.”
The 83-65 win moved the Jays to 7-3 heading into a week off for final exams prior to their last non-conference game of the season — a road game at Alabama.
Joking on the postgame radio show that thanks to his hiring of Director of Athletic Performance Jeremy Anderson he can’t practice even if he wanted to, McDermott said that the team was down to eight healthy bodies on Friday. They ran out a lineup in practice of Mason Miller, Jason Green, Isaac Trout, Fred King and walk-on Shane Thomas at the point because there simply wasn’t anyone else with game experience.
“This break is coming at a good time,” McDermott said. “We navigated a very difficult part of our schedule. And you know, we were a possession away from beating Texas A&M and winning four out of the last five. But to come off that tough loss to San Diego State without Steven, and then with Steven limping around for a couple games and splitting those two in Vegas, and then to come home and get these two games? It puts us back on the trajectory we need to be on.”
Inside the box:
Jamiya Neal very nearly had a triple-double, with 19 points, nine rebounds, nine assists and four blocks. To put that in perspective, when Baylor Scheierman logged a triple-double last season for the Jays it was the program’s first-ever traditional triple-double (the ones Benoit Benjamin had in the mid-1980s included blocks).
His nine assists led to 22 points for teammates, meaning he was directly responsible for 41 of their 83 points — nearly half.
“We’d be dead without him. That’s just a reality,” McDermott said. “Defensively he gives us some versatility to guard some different guys, and then he fits well in our transition game. He got to the rim today and showed some patience when he got to the rim, which is something he hadn’t done very consistently, and the fact that he finished a lot of plays, I think, is going to be great for him as well.”
There’s still room for improvement, too, according to McDermott. He noted correctly that it’s historically taken transfers 10-15 games to get acclimated and adjusted to Creighton’s system and style of play. Given Neal’s performances this week — he had a career-high 21 points, nine rebounds and four assists in the win over Notre Dame last Saturday, too — it looks like he’s on a similar timeline to recent additions like Scheierman and Steven Ashworth, who began to look comfortable around this point in their first season at CU.
For his part, Neal said he’s embraced the structure of Creighton’s system after his time in a more free-for-all style at Arizona State.
“We’re very process oriented. I like that we do the same thing every day, win, lose, or draw,” Neal said. “Obviously I wasn’t here last year, but they lost to UNLV and that added motivation…the locker room and the coaching staff were serious about getting them back for that loss last year. So, I took that personal as well.”
The turnover bug that has plagued Creighton all year was still an ever-present problem in this one, as 16 turnovers led to 18 UNLV points. 10 of the turnovers happened in the second half.
“It’s a hard way to live when they’re shooting 64 shots and you shoot 49 because you turn it over so much,” McDermott said. “If we could ever quit throwing it to the other team, we could win more games.”
The usual contributors had solid games, as Kalkbrenner scored 12 points with six boards in 26 minutes and Ashworth had 17 points with seven assists and four boards. But it was the contributions from a pair of bench players that grabbed the spotlight.
Isaac Traudt tied his career high with five made 3s on seven attempts, scoring 15 points and grabbing five rebounds in a career-high 28 minutes. And Jasen Green scored a career-high 12 points on 5-of-5 shooting, including a pair of 3s. Both of them started the second half in place of Miller and McAndrew.
“The proof’s in the pudding, and the proof’s in the work, and those guys have been consistent with their work,” McDermott said. “We’ve got a bunch of guys who are in there every day getting extra work and working after practice or before practice to try to get better. They were both in new roles. Jasen started some and I didn’t really like how it was going. Isaac started some and I didn’t think he was terribly comfortable in that role. So we went with Jackson, and then today I really liked the way we ended the half, so we rolled with it the second half.”
McDermott was thrilled to see that Green’s defensive spark at the end of the win over Kansas — he played the final eight minutes after not seeing the floor in the first 32 — had carried over into this one.
“He has played hardly any any minutes at the ‘3’ all year and however many minutes he played today, were all at the three, basically,” McDermott said. “So he’s playing a different position, chasing perimeter guys around, having to handle the ball a little bit more, but he’s prepared himself for that.”
It remains to be seen what happens with the starting lineup at Alabama and beyond, but the Green that Bluejay fans saw this week was the one they were hoping to get all season. His athleticism and ability to create havoc defensively add a different wrinkle to Creighton’s rotation — one that they’ll need without Isaacs’ offensive firepower.