Bluejay Beat:
Key Stats:
Creighton’s 41 points were their lowest total in seven years, and just one more than their record low in the McDermott Era (40 against #21 Georgetown in January of 2015). The Bluejays missed 23 consecutive shots over a span of 17 minutes in that game, during which Georgetown turned a 15-12 Creighton lead into a 43-18 edge. A 31-6 Hoyas run that left the Omaha crowd groaning, and was undoubtedly the low point of a bad season. Before that one, you have to go back to the third-to-last game of the Rick Johnson Era to find a worse offensive performance — a 71-38 loss to Missouri State in February of 1994. That’s the kind of company this game keeps. Yuck.
With that said, this one wasn’t marked by anything quite as dramatic as the 23 straight missed shots in that 2015 Georgetown game disguised as a horror show, but not for a lack of trying. Creighton shot 0-for-15 from three-point range in the second half and 3-of-24 for the game. They missed 29 shots and rebounded only six of them. And they had the same number of turnovers (16) as they did made baskets (16).
It’s the turnovers that really stick out. In a 59-possession game, Creighton turned it over 16 times — or 27% of the times they had the ball. That’s bad even by CU’s poor standards for turnovers this season. They’ve turned it over on 20.9% of their possessions, ranking 281st in D1 and 10th in the Big East, yet somehow blew that number out of the water on Wednesday.
Individually, Ryan Hawkins went scoreless on 0-of-6 shooting. To only get six shots for your leading scorer is bad enough; to have him miss all of them is worse. He’s been Creighton’s most indispensable player this season, but Wednesday was a clunker.
“Unfortunately there’s six or seven games (in a season) where you wonder who’s in those uniforms,” coach Greg McDermott said. “That happened (Wednesday). I think it happens to every team over the course of the season. You hope it doesn’t happen when you’re playing a team as good as Villanova in their building.”
Alas. It did, and a 34-point blowout was the result.
Recap:
The roller coaster that is Creighton’s 2021-22 season took another steep drop on Wednesday with a ghastly 75-41 loss at #19 Villanova. It was a 180-degree turn from the first meeting, a 79-59 CU win in Omaha. The rematch saw the Wildcats come out aggressive and physical, harassing the Jays defensively and running their offense with precision to get great shots.
“I feel like they kind of made it personal after the first game,” Ryan Hawkins said. “Nothing was easy. No cut was easy. Every time you caught the ball there was a hand on you. Some of it’s a credit to them, getting into us a little bit. Some of it’s on us. We didn’t respond to that same physicality.”
It started from the opening tip. Creighton had six live-ball turnovers on their first 13 possessions. Meanwhile, Villanova rebounded 10 of their first 23 missed shots, and held Creighton nearly nine minutes without a second-chance opportunity in the first half — a stretch where Villanova’s lead grew from 18-17 to 34-20.
And they took a page out of Iowa State and Arizona State’s gameplans, using strength and physicality to neutralize Creighton’s speed. More specifically, Villanova decided to do everything they could to build a wall around the lane after surrendering 42 points in the paint to Creighton two weeks ago. They sagged off of shooters to pack the paint, switched screens to take away driving lanes, and made a living bumping and hip-checking players — figuring correctly that, especially at home with Jay Wright working the officials, not everything (or not much of anything) would be called. This is the book on the 2021-22 Bluejays until they prove they can beat it, and they’ll see it a lot from Big East opponents the next two months.
By the end of the first half, CU had almost stopped trying to get the ball into the paint entirely. On the final 14 possessions of the half, they scored just twice due in large part to taking exclusively jump shots. At the start of the second half, their first three shots were all threes. All of them clanged off the rim. A manageable 36-22 halftime deficit was 46-24 in the blink of an eye, and with 17 minutes to play the game was over for all intents and purposes.
“They were just so much better than us,” Greg McDermott said. “We looked like a bunch of young kids. They were more physical. They were more disciplined. And the score certainly was reflective of that… we’re learning lots of lessons this year. This team has learned on the fly all season long. We had a lot of young guys who were out there against some really smart, veteran, tough players.”
It certainly didn’t help that Ryan Kalkbrenner sprained his ankle in practice on Tuesday, and was clearly not himself. But Kalkbrenner, and the Jays, get nearly a week to rest and lick their wounds after this one before hosting Providence next Tuesday night. The Friars are coming off of their own blowout loss, an 86-56 thrashing at Marquette, and though they are scheduled to play a weekend game against St. John’s, you know Ed Cooley will have his team’s attention after that loss.
“We can’t let one loss become two or three,” Hawkins said. “We’ve got to nip it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
