Recap:
With 12:16 to go in the first half of Thursday’s game, Butler had built a 16-7 lead. The Bulldogs had made eight of their first 12 shots; Creighton had four turnovers. The smaller-than-usual crowd because of a winter storm that delivered negative-40 degree temperatures to Omaha was quiet, and so were CU’s players. Their lack of communication defensively was nothing new — it’s been cited time and time again during this six-game losing streak as problematic — but it was glaringly obvious in a quiet arena.
Greg McDermott said his team had a good week of practice, and he was disappointed by their flat start. He called timeout to regroup, and brought in a couple of bench players to try and jump-start his team.
“I thought Francisco (Farabello)’s energy changed the game,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show, noting how his emotion, intensity in fighting through ball screens, and verbal communication rubbed off on his teammates. “It became contagious. Everybody followed. That’s a great example of his leadership.”
Over the final 12 minutes of the half, the Jays put together their best sustained stretch of basketball since returning from Maui a month ago. Baylor Scheierman and Ryan Nembhard started the offensive surge with a layup and a three-pointer from the wing, and then the Jays strung together a series of defensive stops to flip the game. The resulting 8-0 run gave CU a 22-20 lead, and they never trailed again.
Ryan Kalkbrenner started it with a three from the top of the key to cut Butler’s lead to 20-17:
And on the next possession, Scheierman sank a three from the beak of the bird at center court with the shot clock expiring to tie the score. They took the lead on a two-handed dunk by Fredrick King on the next trip down the floor, and then their defense took over.
Farabello stole the ball and hit Scheierman with a pass for a trailing three in transition, and they followed it up by forcing a shot clock violation on Butler’s next possession. A three by Arthur Kaluma made it 28-22 Jays and completed a four-possession stretch where they got a defensive stop, hit a three, got another defensive stop, and hit a second three. Vintage Bluejay basketball, in other words.
With their threes dropping and the threat of Kalkbrenner at the rim giving Butler’s defense a lot of difficult decisions to make, driving lanes began to open up. Over the last five minutes of the half, CU made four layups off the dribble. Leading 40-34 at the half, the Jays continued to score almost at will in the paint as the second half began. They scored on six of their first eight possessions, with King, Kalkbrenner and Kaluma all making baskets at the rim and Nembhard making a tear-drop floater from six feet out.
Defensively, they got stops on eight straight possessions, and combined with a rejevenated offense they put the game on ice. Heading into the under-12 timeout, they led 58-44 after the play of the night — Nembhard kicked the ball across the court to Farabello in the corner, who turned down a decent look at a three for a bounce pass along the baseline to Kalkbrenner for a dunk-and-one.
Just as importantly, they showed a killer instinct by closing the game on a 10-2 run, taking their largest lead of the night in the final minute when Zander Yates converted a three-point play.
Inside the Box:
The Jays hit 10-of-15 shots and scored 26 points on 16 possessions over the last 10 minutes of the first half. They followed it up with six assists on their first eight baskets of the second half, with 16 of their first 18 points coming in the paint.
In his return to the floor, Ryan Kalkbrenner was really good — he had 19 points, four rebounds, two blocks and two assists in 29 minutes, making 8-of-9 shots. He’s clearly not 100% yet, but his presence on the floor changes everything Creighton does for the better.
“It’s just a huge presence offensively and defensively for us,” Ryan Nembhard said in the press conference afterward. “He’s an anchor on both ends, I feel like. He gets our offense flowing. He knows where to screen, he knows where to be on the floor. It’s good to have Kalk back.”
Kalkbrenner has only practiced three times over the past two weeks, and has yet to make it through an entire practice as he works to build his conditioning back up. He only made it through about one-third of it on Monday, and half of the time on Tuesday and Wednesday. Greg McDermott joked on a postgame interview on FS1 that his training and conditioning staff might be upset with him for playing Kalkbrenner 29 minutes in his return, but that he’d asked his star to be honest with him about when he’d pushed too far. And every time Kalkbrenner told his coach he needed a breather, they got him off the floor as quick as they could.
“He feels better than he felt when he last played (against Nebraska),” McDermott said. “He was really sick, he couldn’t talk because his throat was so sore. He’s in a much better place now.”
The Jays’ offense getting back on track was important, for sure. They made 8-of-16 from three-point range and 28-of-50 overall, with 19 assists on those 28 made baskets. But don’t sleep on the improvement they showed defensively. Butler had just 22 second half points, and their leading scorer, Chuck Harris, made his final shot of the night in the first minute of the second half. CU had eight blocks and six steals, a testament to the way they communicated and played better team defense than they’d played during their losing skid.
That was no accident, according to McDermott. Monday’s practice was brutal, with the staff putting all the cards on the table after six straight losses and a double-digit defeat at Marquette where they were embarrassed by what they saw on film. They used the old “three stops in a row” drill to hammer home the importance of talking and communicating on defense.
What’s the “three stops in a row” drill, you ask? A simulated five-on-five scrimmage where the side defending has to get three stops in a row, or else they have to run. And if they give up a basket on the first possession, they have to run double.
When the whistle blows to start the punitive running, “you can look at me all you want, but the drill isn’t going to end. I don’t care,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show while explaining it. “You’re already fatigued from the running, and you get ticked off for a second at whoever screwed it up. But then you realize, you know what, we can’t do it without that guy. I can’t be mad at him. They came together a little better through that drill. They understood that if we’re going to get stops, and play the way we want to play offensively, it’s not five guys operating independently. It’s five guys working together.”
And after a sluggish start, the Jays owned the final 32 minutes, outscoring Butler by 31 points in a near flawless performance where they showed how good they can be when they play connected. Now they get DePaul at home on Christmas Day, and Seton Hall at home after the first of the year, as they try to get to 3-1 before an early-season showdown at UConn.
“We can’t afford to stub our toe at home in these next two if we want to get where we want to be,” McDermott said. “We’ll be ready.”