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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Providence 65, Creighton 53

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[Box Score]

Key Stats:

Creighton stays relatively even with Providence in rebounding (losing 34-32) after being destroyed on the glass by the Friars on the road a year ago. However, CU is once again ice cold from the field, making 5-21 from three-point range and 14-32 on other shots. The Jays primary guards (Chatman, Brooks, Zierden, Milliken, Dingman) combine to go an atrocious 6-32 from the field. On points in the paint, Creighton outscores PC 18-12 in the first half, but gets outscored 20-11 in the second.

Standout Performance:

For the second straight game, Geoff Groselle — a junior in his fourth year in the program who has played sparingly in previous years — was the best center on the team, at least offensively. He scored 12 first-half points on a variety of post moves, and with the guards confident of his ability to both catch passes cleanly and to finish consistently, they fed him the ball. That led to high-percentage shots, which he made. Funny how that works.

If the playing time in the second half is any indication, he might be the starter on Saturday. Groselle played 13 minutes, Hanson played four, and Artino just two. That would have seemed absurd in October, but after scoring 14 points in this game and 10 at North Texas, the case could be made that he deserves that opportunity.

Recap and Analysis:

As it was a year ago, the discrepancy in size and athleticism between Creighton and Providence was startling, and their zone defense made life tough on the Jays offensively. But except for a run at the start of the game and a run at the start of the second half, the game was basically even. Providence jumped out to a 14-4 lead six minutes into the game; Creighton came back, took the lead at one point, and trailed by just four at the break. Then Providence used a 12-4 run over the first six minutes of the second stanza, and the resulting 12 point lead was the final margin of victory.

The big difference, though? Providence has the Big East’s leading scorer, LaDontae Henton, and he proved unstoppable as he scored 35 points on 12-21 shooting while grabbing eight rebounds for good measure. Heck, he played the full 40 minutes, giving neither himself nor the Creighton defense a rest. Meanwhile Creighton’s offensive ineptitude continued, as they took 21 three-pointers and made just five. It’s no coincidence that the only point in the game where it looked like they had a legitimate chance of winning was the span of the first half where they were successful scoring inside.

Once Providence took their driving lanes away, and CU’s guards stopped feeding the post, that left outside shots as their only source of offense — and with those shots not falling, it became a struggle to put points on the board. Combine that with Providence getting nearly 25% of their points in transition, and you’ve got a recipe for a double-digit loss.

In the big picture, the Jays are a team that is likely to only win 2-3 road games in the league this year, and this was never expected to be one of them. Their route to the postseason is to win at least seven home games, steal at least two on the road, and go into MSG with 18 or 19 wins. It’s frustrating in the immediate aftermath of a game they seemingly could have won, but reading too much into what it means for the remaining 17 conference games — or for the outcome of the season — is a mistake.

Quotables:

“The key was the start of the game and the start of the second half. They scored 14 points on the first eight possessions of the game, and 12 points on the first eight possessions of the second half. Take those two sections of the game out, and we outplayed them the rest of the game. We constantly are fighting an uphill battle, and obviously we’re subbing guys quick and trying to do whatever we can to get the right lineup out there. We may have to adjust who we start again just to try to get something going.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“In the second half, they got layup after layup, and got fouled. That can’t happen. And the transition points, with what we’re committing to transition defense, there should not be transition baskets. That was disappointing. But the reality of it is, as I told the team, this is all we’ve got. There’s not some magical thing going to walk through the door and change all of this. We have to figure it out amongst ourselves. Everybody’s got to get a little better, me included. I have to find ways offensively to put them in better places to be successful. That’s my responsibility. We’re putting so much pressure on our defense because we’ve been inept offensively, especially the last couple of games.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“When you don’t have the size and athleticism of your opponent, where you have to beat them is on execution. You have to put on a clinic from an execution standpoint. That starts with our ability to take care of the basketball, and starts with us being more physical screening to give a teammate a little more time to shoot the basketball. The technique of our boxouts. We don’t have guys that are going to the top of the square to get the ball off the glass, so we better execute the block out. That’s a five-man job. It was last year as well. There’s just some things we have to try to get better at, and execute better. As I told the team, I like coaching this team, they’re a good group of guys, they’re unselfish, they wear the Creighton jersey with pride, we just have to find a way to get a little bit better.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought Providence played with a little quicker pace than they did a year ago (in this building). They had to be careful last year because they knew they were playing Bryce Cotton 40 minutes, so they wanted to give him a rest in transition. They have a few more guards this year — and Dunn’s pretty good, by the way, he’s a load — and they got loose on us on some of the long rebounds. We didn’t get back and get our defense set. Dunn’s coming at you at 6’3″ 205, and he’s hard to guard. He made some great plays for himself and some plays for his teammates.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Transition is a big part of what we like to do and when the floor is spaced and the defense isn’t set, that’s our best opportunity for a rhythm three. That’s our best opportunity to attack the basket. I thought we were off again tonight. There was a lot of standing, and not really trying to execute what we were trying to execute.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought we did a decent job tonight of getting into the teeth of the zone, and getting it inside some against the zone. Austin in particular got into the middle of it. I’ll have to watch the film and evaluate the shots. James was 1-5 from three, Z was 1-5, and Austin was 1-5 so those are our three best shooters and they’re 3-15. How good were those shots? That’s what I have to figure out. If 12 of them were really good and three of them were bad, and we go 3-12 on the good ones we’re going to have to live with that. And if we get a guy like Geoff going, get him the ball. Over and over and over again.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“You’re never comfortable defensively against a guy like LaDontae Henton. We were going to double him in the post, but a couple of times we went for lob passes and didn’t establish the double-team, we missed the pass, and now he’s going to the rim. We were a little late on some close-outs. We tried some zone early, and Toby was late on one, we lost Henton in the 1-3-1 and he got free. He got off to a good start, and once a guy like that gets off to a good start they’re tough to stop. We’ve done a good job most of the year of being able to take their best scorer and at least making sure he didn’t off the first five minutes. Tonight we didn’t do that. In hindsight, I would probably stay away from the zone to start the game. We used the 2-3 some, we used the 1-3-1 some, just because we thought they were going to pound it over and over. We thought with a zone we could get their rebounders away from the basket some. And rebounding wise, we hung in there pretty well.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We have to play pretty perfect in a lot of ways to win with the way we’re playing offensively right now. That’s where I really have to turn my attention to. I have to find out different ways to put these guys in a position where they can be more successful. If it’s not working, the responsibility to fix it lies on my shoulders. I have to figure it out. We can’t just say ‘We’re not shooting it well right now.’ That’s not a good enough answer. We need to find other ways to score. We’ll continue to move the chess pieces around to try to give ourselves the best opportunity to do that.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

And Now, Here’s What You Had to Say:

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