Bluejay Beat Podcast:
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton is now 15-4 in the month of February the last three years, the best record in the Big East.
A big reason why? In Big East games, the Jays’ adjusted defensive efficiency is 90.2 — just eight teams in America are better. That’s right. The “Let it Fly” Bluejays have the ninth-best defense in Division 1 since the start of conference play.
In this game, they funneled DePaul’s drives to the middle of the floor, where Ryan Kalkbrenner was waiting to block and/or alter shots. The Blue Demons made only 15-of-42 shots inside the arc (35.7%). Their leading scorer, Javon Freeman-Liberty, had as many missed shots (18) as points (18).
“We decided to play drop-coverage on him, and that’s a heckvua challenge. He’s a big, strong guard. He’s able to get us on his backside some. But we just felt if they’re doing that, the numbers and the analytics at the end of the day would play in our favor,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “That was the case. They took a lot of tough 2-point shots in this game.”
An equally big reason? Ryan Hawkins.
Hawkins had 25 points, 11 rebounds and three assists while never leaving the floor Thursday night — he played all 40 minutes. Friend of WBR Lance Raabe (and Creighton women’s hoops announcer) proposed on Twitter during the game that broadcasters stop referring to Hawkins as “Former Division II player Ryan Hawkins” and simply call him “Ryan Hawkins” at this point. And he’s exactly right.
Through 25 games, Hawkins is averaging 13.9 points and 7.5 rebounds in 33.4 minutes per game in one of the toughest conferences in the country. And since scoring just two points in the loss at Seton Hall on February 4, he’s been on another level — Hawkins is averaging 21.0 points and 9.2 rebounds with three consecutive double-doubles in 37.7 minutes per game. He’s shot 43.9% from three-point range in those four games (18-of-41). He’s heading for some sort of All-Big East honors in a couple of weeks (Second team? Third team?); to continue to throw the DII in front of his name is condescending at this point.
I’ve been wondering about this for a while and it’s been on my research list, but Ryan Holmgren, another Friend of WBR, did the work for me in a post over on the Bluejay Underground so I’ll share his work instead (with credit — thanks Ryan!). Is there a correlation between Hawkins’ stat line and whether the Jays win or lose?
In their nine wins, Hawkins is averaging 18.7 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 2.3 assists to 1.9 turnovers. He’s taken 13 shots per game and made 56% of them, while connecting on 45% of his threes.
In their five losses, Hawkins is averaging just 5.8 points, 6 rebounds and has a negative assist-to-turnover ratio (1 assist, 1.8 turnovers). He’s taken just under seven shots per game and made 27% of them overall, and 18% from three-point range.
It’s a cliche, but the Jays go as Ryan Hawkins go. Full stop.
How many more wins does Creighton have this year because of Hawkins’ decision to play his final year of collegiate basketball in Omaha? Five? Ten? There’s an awful lot of talent on this roster, but Hawkins’ presence has turned a rebuilding year into a reload-slash-transition year — and from a year where the NIT was a goal deemed too lofty by some into an increasingly likely NCAA Tournament year.
What a player.
“He’s such a pleasure to coach,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We’ve got a lot of young guys, and a lot of guys that haven’t been in the role that they’re playing on this team. But Hawk is a guy who, as the pressure gets higher, he knows how to slow himself down to make sure he makes the right play. He knows when to attack the basket, when to get into his bully-ball play and back a guy down, and you add in what he does on the backboards? He’s all over the place on the glass. Defensively he’s our vocal leader. He does everything for this team. I don’t think anybody imagined when he decided to come here from Northwest Missouri that he would have this kind of an impact. We’re lucky we have him.”
Recap:
DePaul led for most of the first half on Thursday night, and with ten minutes gone had built a 23-15 advantage. Then Ryan Hawkins took the game over and DePaul never recovered.
Hawkins scored 10 of the Jays’ final 12 points in the first half, part of a 18-8 run to close the half that gave CU a 33-31 lead. The last of those points came on a buzzer-beating three released one-tenth of a second before the horn.
DePaul had opened the game by making nine of their first 16 shots; they finished the first half making just three of their next 14. The Blue Demons squandered a chance to seize momentum and take a bigger lead after Javon Freeman-Liberty posterized Ryan Kalkbrenner with this dunk; he was called for a technical foul for taunting, which not only negated the two points from his made shot (because CU hit a pair of free throws), it landed him in foul trouble later in the half and caused him to play just nine minutes.
The Blue Demons started the second half by making just one of the first nine shots, and when the Jays had a similar opportunity to seize control of the game with a dunk, they did not make the same mistake. Ryan Nembhard, perhaps cognizant of having a shot blocked at rim moments earlier, rose up over Freeman-Liberty and threw down this rim-rattler.
“I’d gotten blocked a couple of possessions before,” Nembhard said after the game, “and on that one, I saw a dude coming behind me out of the corner of my eye. I thought he might be able to time it well enough to block my shot again if I took a layup.”
Then, with a big grin on his face, he said, “So I dunked it instead.”
The dunk itself is impressive. Bluejay fans across the country were slack-jawed in the aftermath — the explosion, the lack of respect for either the rim or the defender, all of it was thoroughly enjoyable. But watch what happens afterward — Nembhard starts to turn to remind the Blue Demons about what he’d just done as he’s running up the floor, and Hawkins stops him from doing it. He gently but not-at-all subtly turns Nembhard the other way and gets him to continue running up the court, perhaps saving a repeat of the technical foul Freeman-Liberty had received in the first half.
They eventually led by as many as 11 points, 50-39, after a four-point play from Hawkins. But then DePaul caught fire, getting back-to-back triples from Jalen Terry and Courvoisier McCauley. CU consistently had answers, first with a pull-up jumper from Nembhard and then with a dunk by Ryan Kalkbrenner, but DePaul kept coming. Clinging to a 54-50 lead with just under six minutes to go, Hawkins repeated what he’d done in the first half — he scored six of the Jays’ next 10 points as they took control of the game, 64-54, with 2:40 to play.
And then Nembhard slammed the door shut with a three-pointer at the 1:16 mark, followed by a jumper moments later and a pair of free throws on the final possession, to seal a double-digit win.
All totaled, Creighton answered DePaul’s surge by scoring 19 points on their final 11 possessions, making six of its last 10 shots and 6-of-7 from the line.
“If you aspire to play in the postseason, you have to find a way to win games like these last four,” McDermott said. “And I’m really proud of the guys that they did just that.”