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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Marquette 53, Creighton 52

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

In one of the ugliest college basketball games of the year, Creighton misses 35 shots and Marquette misses 25, the teams combine for 27 turnovers, and they convert a combined 15 offensive rebounds into just nine points. Creighton goes nearly ten minutes without a field goal in the first half; Marquette goes nearly ten minutes without a field goal in the second half.

Recap and Analysis:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Early in the game, Creighton allowed an opposing shooter to get hot from three-point range, went into a prolonged offensive slump, and fell behind by double-digits only to stage a furious rally, take the lead…and lose in the final minute.

It’s becoming a bit of a broken record (or a corrupted MP3? Is that a better 21st Century analogy? I’m so confused) at this point, isn’t it?

This time, CU let Duane Wilson and Matt Carlino get hot from long range — with Wilson getting wide open catch-and-shoot threes way too often, and Carlino the same when they weren’t allowing him to go left with the ball, instead of right, where he’s a much worse shooter. And to add insult to injury, Derrick Wilson made a pair of three-pointers in the first half. The same Derrick Wilson who, in 115 career games for Marquette, had made 7-42 from three-point range IN HIS ENTIRE CAREER. He’d never made more than one in a game before. He had two in the first half alone on Wednesday. Because of course he did.

The damage from those shots really took a toll during a ten-minute stretch where the Bluejays couldn’t buy a bucket. Up 11-9 at the under-12 timeout, they would not make another basket until James Milliken hit a three-pointer with 2:29 to play in the half. In the meantime, Marquette rattled off a 17-1 run (the lone Bluejay point coming on an Avery Dingman free throw) to take a 14-point lead. During that stretch, Creighton went 0-15 from the floor (0-8 from three-point range and 0-7 on two’s).

Luckily, while Marquette was shooting better than the Jays, they weren’t making enough buckets to build an insurmountable lead — the Golden Eagles were just 11-28 and 6-15 from three-point range themselves in the first half. Milliken’s three to snap the scoring draught sparked a late run, and after threes from Isaiah Zierden and Rick Kreklow, the Jays had used a 9-2 run to end the half and trailed by just seven.

In the second half, they flipped the script. Marquette made just seven baskets in the final 20 minutes, and after taking a 41-33 lead into the under-12 timeout, would get just five made free-throws over the next 10 minutes — and most bizarrely, they attempted just three field goals over that span (missing them all). Eight turnovers meant eight empty possessions with no shot attempts. While Creighton was able to take a 50-46 before Marquette finally made another field goal, I had the sinking feeling, given this team’s current slump, that it might not be enough. Perusing Twitter during stoppages, I found that I wasn’t alone; that seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among Jays fans.

As time ticked away, though, it looked like the clock would be on their side for once. Duane Wilson hit a jumper to snap Marquette’s field-goal-less drought with 1:41 to go, and it cut the lead to 50-48. But Artino answered on the other end with a nice jump hook, and with just 1:05 to go, Creighton led by four. It’s pretty hard to blow a four-point lead with a minute left.

So of course Creighton blew a four-point lead with a minute left.

First, they let Carlino get loose for an open jumper, which he nailed. Then Artino travelled while trying to pivot for a shot in the lane, giving Marquette the ball back. After a timeout to set up a play, Carlino broke free from Dingman — who could neither force Carlino to pull it down and settle for a mid-range jumper to tie it, nor force him to go right and take a shot out of his comfort zone — and put up a (mostly) uncontested three. It swished home, and with 10 seconds to go, Marquette had the lead.

The Jays opted not to call timeout, which would have allowed them to draw up a play but also would have allowed Marquette to set up their zone defense — or to realize that they had three fouls to give, and that they could have essentially eaten up the remaining 10 seconds by fouling the recipient of the inbounds pass 50+ feet away from the hoop twice, giving CU perhaps three or four seconds to get off a potential winning shot, IF the Bluejays could manage to inbound the ball three straight times without a turnover. While usually I prefer a timeout in that scenario, this was one of those times where playing it out was the right call.

Despite not calling time, the Jays managed to create a really good, high-percentage shot for Artino about three feet from the basket. It rimmed in and out, the potential tip-in from Kreklow did as well, and Creighton had lost their second straight game on a come-from-behind three in the waning seconds.

They’re literally — LITERALLY — 13 seconds away from being 2-3 in the conference and in the thick of a whole lot of interesting things. If they’d finished off their comeback against DePaul (or, you know, not fallen behind 20-5 after five minutes in the first place), they’d be 3-2 and things would be REALLY interesting. But they aren’t. They’re 0-5, which is almost certainly an insurmountable hole to dig out of, even for a team with a penchant for digging out of holes. They’re not a terrible, Rick Johnson Era 0-for, with game after game of 20 or even 30 point blowouts. They’re a team with less talent than their opponents who has played as hard as they possibly can, made games extremely close, and just hasn’t gotten the breaks or the bounces to go their way.

Still, 0-5 is 0-5, and at the end of the day, you are what your record says you are.

The shame in all of this is, Creighton did some really good things in this game. Luke Fischer, Marquette’s key weapon inside who came in averaging 13 points and 5 rebounds, scored a relatively easy basket on the first possession against Will Artino. It was the only basket he made the entire night, and he’d only attempt two more shots despite playing 25 minutes. Artino was doing a tremendous job of denying him the ball — and when Fischer did catch it, of denying him any chance of putting up a shot. Sure, Fischer was in foul trouble most of the game and that sapped him of some of his aggressiveness, but Artino had something to do with that, as well. For the night, Fischer scored two points with two rebounds, by far his worst game as a Golden Eagle. No one has held him in check to that extent this year, and it deserves praise.

Rick Kreklow played a terrific game, perhaps his best as a Bluejay, scoring 13 points on 5-9 shooting and 2-4 from three-point range, snagged four rebounds, all while playing active defense that resulted in three steals. Toby Hegner overcame a rough start in front his homestate fans to score 10 points with six rebounds, and also played good defense.

On the downside, the Bluejay guards were, unfortunately, really bad. The four primary guards (Austin Chatman, Devin Brooks, Isaiah Zierden, James Milliken) combined to go 7-22 from the floor and 3-15 from three point range, with just 15 combined points. Creighton isn’t going to win very many games where their guards are that bad offensively, regardless of what the big men are up to.

Quotables:

“We did a great job of defending their action, much like we did against Seton Hall, where their initial action to get Sterling Gibbs the ball, Avery blew it up. Tonight, the play they ran was actually a play we prepared for. It was a little fake handoff, they had some action going on the backside — a little flare on the backside — and then they brought Carlino right back off of the flare. He was the guy they faked the handoff to, and then they brought him right back. Avery did a great job on the initial action; he stopped that. But then after we stopped that, they ran the ball screen, and we were maybe a smidge late in getting through the ball screen but I thought Avery did a great job of fighting it, getting over top, and challenging the shot. He hit a tough one.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Because they had three fouls to give, we made the decision during their timeout that we were not going to call timeout if they scored, but instead attack them. If we’d called timeout, we’d have taken it out of bounds on the side and they’d have fouled us right away. And, we probably would have seen two or three different defenses in the last ten seconds. So we decided to play ’em straight up. The way it turned out, Will got a great look down low, and Ricky was right there on the backside for the tip-in, and both shots just bounced around the rim.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I’m just…I’m heartbroken for my guys, I really am. They are doing what we’re asking them to do. We have limitations. I think anybody, especially our fans who watch us play, understand where our challenges are. But it isn’t because they don’t care and it isn’t because they’re not working at it as a group, and it isn’t because they aren’t sticking together. Devin Brooks played as few a minutes as he’s played all year tonight, and his talk and activity at halftime in the locker room encouraging his guys and his teammates was incredible. Just like being successful brings a group together, sometimes adversity brings a group together. These guys genuinely hurt for one another right now. It’s going to be a challenge for our coaching staff. We have to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and get ready and get back to work, because Providence doesn’t care about what happened to us here, and they don’t care what happened to us against Seton Hall. We just have to keep fighting. I firmly believe that this group will do that.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I need to go back and look at the film from that stretch in the first half where we just had the one free throw out of 14 possessions, I don’t know how much time it lasted but it seemed like an eternity. I felt like we were getting decent shots against the 1-3-1 and the 2-3. And I felt like they were shots that started with some attacking action into the paint and ended with a kick out. So now it’s a step-in three. It’s not a three running off a screen, it’s not a three running in transition. It’s the kind of three you’re going to shoot at a little higher percentage. Austin got it inside and Geoff missed a couple of layups at the rim, Will missed one at the rim, Avery missed one at the rim, so we couldn’t score no matter what we were trying in the first half. But I felt like they were decent shots. To their credit, they stuck with it and we went on that little mini-run to end the half to get back in the game. What we can control, and I’ve got to look at the film, are turnovers. We got up 42-41, and we turn it over five out of six possessions. And we were scoring with relative regularity against their zone in the second half. Those five turnovers, even though they only scored off of one of them, it’s still empty possessions for us. That really could have changed the game because if we were able to get up six or eight points with five minutes left, we were defending pretty well, we’d have had an opportunity to put it away.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“From a preparation standpoint, the guys are doing the study, they’re learning the guys they’re assigned to guard. Their communication on the floor when an action is called is great, we’re blowing it up before it happens. They’re doing everything that we could ask them to do. Defensively, we played great. There were 60 or 61 possessions, and they scored 53 points. That is good enough, and more than good enough, to win. It’s our best defensive performance in league play. Unfortunately, our offense didn’t match our defense in terms of making shots. Now, did we get good shots? I think so, I’ve got to go look at it, but I felt like for the most part the guys attempted to do what we asked them to do.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I think the guys have the right mindset. I believe that they do. You know, we’ve got guys in there with tears in their eyes after the game. They want this to happen. I want it to happen for them. We’ll continue to work as a coaching staff to do everything that we can to continue to put this team in a position to be successful. And our fans, what they can do is to show up in full force on Saturday night. I think what this team needs more than anything is for them to show up for the ‘Pink Out’ and have the place jam-packed, so that our guys understand that everybody’s still on your side, everybody’s still fighting for you, everybody will be there for you. My message to them after the game was, ‘We cannot quit on each other. We’ve been through a lot together. Without question, we’ve faced a lot of adversity in the last week. It’s been tough. It’s hard. It’s tough to pick yourself back up. You want to hide in a corner somewhere and bury your head, but you can’t do it.’ We have to continue to fight, and attempt to move this group and this program forward. That’s what we intend to do.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

And Now, Here’s What You Had to Say:

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