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Morning After: Jasen Green’s Huge Game Carries Creighton to 71-62 Semifinal Win over UConn

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[Box Score]

January in Storrs, Jamiya Neal scored 12 of Creighton’s first 17 points, carrying the load while his teammates settled in against the Huskies’ aggressive defense. Friday night in the Big East Semifinals, he did it again, scoring the Jays’ first nine points. His first shot, a three-pointer 20 seconds into the game, scorched the net and was a welcome sign after his team got off to a slow start offensively in the quarterfinals.

Jasen Green took over from there, scoring on a breakaway dunk with Neal assisting. Those two would connect again a few minutes later, with Green assisting Neal for a three in the corner.

Green made 7-of-7 from the field in the first half alone, scoring 15 points to set a new career high. Nine of them came in a 12-2 Bluejay run late in the half, pushing them to a 42-30 lead.

Three minutes into the second half, Creighton had opened up a 55-38 lead on third-seed UConn. The crowd at MSG, most of which were cheering for the Huskies, was silent. At that point, the Jays were shooting north of 70% for the game and scoring 1.719 points per possession, torching UConn’s defense in a way almost no one does. Could it last long enough to put them away?

The two-time defending national champs made sure the answer was an emphatic “no.” UConn’s defense stiffened up, guarding the Jays’ guards aggressively one-on-one on the perimeter. They went scoreless for more than four minutes, as UConn went on a 12-0 run; they made 1-of-10 from the floor in six minutes. The big shift, though, was the return of Tarris Reed, who picked up two fouls in one minute of the first half. With Reed on the floor, the Huskies began to dominate the glass — and take advantage of second chances.

“UConn’s not going to quit. You know, they’re in this building and they’ve got the place full of fans. So we knew they were going to make a run,” McDermott said. “We made some mistakes during that run and I thought the ball got a little sticky during that time and we didn’t get the ball moving like we needed to.”

But after Greg McDermott called timeout to settle his team down, they too stiffened defensively. Over the next five minutes the teams scored two points apiece; it went from 55-50 Creighton to 57-52. And after the 12-0 UConn run, CU responded by winning the next ten minutes 11-8. The Huskies succeeded at turning it into an old-school Big East rock fight — and Creighton was beating them at their own game. That might have been surprising to observers who equate CU’s lack of fouls with a lack of toughness. McDermott wanted to make sure the East coast media knew the truth.

“Our defense is a little different. You’ve got teams like UConn and St. John’s that play with a lot of pressure and a lot of physicality; force a lot of turnovers. For some reason they think the way we do it is soft,” McDermott said. “I got news for ya – I got some tough dudes in my locker room.”

He noted correctly that no one beats UConn twice in one season without being tough. “It takes toughness to execute defense the way we execute it. We’re trying to win the analytical game at the free throw line and that takes mental toughness as well to understand that and be disciplined. No, we don’t force a bunch of turnovers. No, we don’t get up under you. But there’s a method to our madness in what we’re doing and this group of guys has executed it extremely well all season long.”

Ahead 59-56 with five minutes to go, Jamiya Neal drained a three from the top of the circle. Kalkbrenner followed with two free throws, Jasen Green hit a pull-up jumper, and then Green made the most underrated play of the game. Ahead 66-60 with 38 seconds to go, Neal missed the front end of a one-and-one. But Green fought for the offensive rebound, passed it to Ashworth, and after drawing a foul he sank two free throws to ice the game. With that, the Jays had successfully weathered the storm. All that was left was to dribble out the clock and move on to the title game.

But with 10 seconds left, Neal took a pass at midcourt and saw open floor in front of him. He decided to gloat and executed a windmill dunk, then hung on the rim for dramatic effect. UConn’s Hassan Diarra took exception, shoved Neal, and put up two fists like he was ready to fight. Fortunately, Neal didn’t take the bait, and Creighton’s assistant coaches stopped Fedor Zugic from running in to back him up, as Zugic was ready to fight for his teammate. But it was a bizarre scene, with McDermott pointing a finger angrily at UConn assistant Luke Murray, then diffusing the situation with Dan Hurley while the officials sorted it out.

Uncalled for? Sure. At 69-62 the game was over. But the litany of national pundits who weighed in afterward were mostly missing the larger context — remember, a month ago in Omaha, it was the Huskies doing the gloating. Liam McNeeley celebrated quite enthusiastically in front of the student section. Hurley followed it by mocking CU fans and yelling “Bye bye! Two rings! Two rings!” So, you know, turnabout is fair play, don’t dish it out if you can’t take it, insert your own cliche here, etc.

“They were already up with 7 seconds left. He didn’t want to dribble the ball out, and went in for a fancy dunk,” Diarra said in explaining why he reacted the way he did. “I just felt it was disrespectful to the game of basketball.”

For what it’s worth, Neal apologized afterward. “I got caught up in the emotions of the game. Just a lot of emotions going on. So I would like to apologize for that,” Neal said. “I respect Coach Hurley and those guys over there. They have a great, great program, and obviously they’re the two-time national champs. I just got caught up in the moment, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

With the win, Creighton advances to the Big East championship for the fifth time in 11 years, and will look to win it for the first time.

“This is such an unlikely journey,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “If you go back to the end of December and think about how we all felt at that time, what this team has done since that point is one of the more remarkable and rewarding things that I’ve ever been part of.”

Inside the Box:

Any look at the stats from this one has to start with Jasen Green. His previous career high was 14 points, set three weeks ago against Georgetown, and he’d scored in double figures just three times all season. His high-water mark as a freshman was eight points, set last February 1 in the 85-66 win over #1 UConn. In this one, he had 15 in the first half alone, and 19 for the game.

“They got really into Kalkbrenner and Ashworth. If you’re going to take Kalk away, that’s going to leave some things open,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We liked the matchup with Jasen Green, and his pace with the moves that he made was really incredible. He’s seen his confidence grow and, you know, it seems like he’s always making plays in the postseason now. He’s kind of got a reputation. The beautiful thing is Jasen could have played six minutes tonight, and if we’d have won, he’d have the same smile on his face that he has right now. He’s all about the team. He’s all about doing what the team needs him to do to win.”

“I was at certain places in the right moments and I was also getting some really good mismatches down on the post,” Green said in a postgame radio interview. “I mean, I’m a pretty tall guy. I’m a pretty strong guy. So you’re going to have to put a pretty strong guy on me to defend me. Otherwise, I’m just going to be able to have my way. But I’m like a opportunist player, I’m not gonna go take the game — I’m gonna let the game come to me. I’m gonna take what’s given to me. I feel like I was able to display that here, like I wasn’t too aggressive, but when I had my moments I would just take them.

Green’s huge offensive performance was part of an extraordinary half of basketball where the Jays made 75 percent from the field (18-24), won the rebound battle 15-10, and had nine assists to just two turnovers. It’s even more extraordinary — and unbelievable — when you consider they did that with Kalkbrenner scoring four points on three shot attempts, and Ashworth scoring five points on three shots. But they got 15 from Green and 13 from Neal to make up the difference.

“Obviously that first half defensive performance was, you know, not worthy of having a chance to play on Saturday night at MSG against a team like St. John’s this year,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “We got exactly what we deserved. Credit (Jasen) Green. You’re going to lose if a five-point-a-game scorer is at 15 at halftime. We got what we deserved and we deserve to be going home.”

The Huskies continued to hold Kalkbrenner (eight second half points) and Ashworth (seven), while also taking away Green and Neal. CU scored just 25 points in the second half after getting 46 in the first, and scored 16 points in the final 16 minutes — after going ahead 55-40 at the 16:00 mark, they held on to win 71-62. Credit their defense for that.

UConn was 12-of-31 (38.7%) in the second half and 2-of-12 from three (16.7%). And while they did convert seven offensive rebounds into 10 second-chance points, CU only committed two turnovers — and UConn got just two points off of them.

“We answered the bell defensively. There’s not a team that’s harder to prepare for overnight than UConn,” McDermott said. “They’re difficult when you have two or three days. We watched some film of what we did well in Storrs. We watched some film of what we didn’t do well in Omaha. The guys were able to take that information and really put on a clinic on how to defend UConn.”

Highlights:

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