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Men's Basketball

Morning After: Xavier 75, #9 Creighton 69

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[Box Score]

Key Stats: Xavier scores 17 points off 15 Creighton turnovers. CU misses 24 — twenty-four — 3-pointers (10-34). Xavier outrebounds Creighton 34-32.

Quick Recap: Xavier played like a desperate team — aggressive, intense, focused — and from the get-go, Creighton was unable to match any of those three characteristics. In the first half, they turned it over seven times, many of them due to sloppy passes, and were clobbered on the boards 18-12. The Musketeers’ Justin Martin nearly had a double-double before the break, scoring nine points with 12 rebounds, and Dee Davis was a perfect 3-3 from three-point range. Meanwhile, Creighton was 4-14 from three-point land in that opening stanza, getting open looks galore but failing to convert. Missed shots and turnovers fueled Xavier’s transition game, and combined with a rambunctious crowd, you had a recipe for an upset.

Despite all that, the game was tied at 26 with six minutes to go in the first half, but they turned it over on five of their next nine possessions as Xavier swelled their lead to 41-30. That would ultimately be the decisive stretch of the game — CU made a couple of runs to close the gap, but the game was never tied again.

One of those runs closed a 13-point gap to just three with 5:27 to play, after a triple by Doug McDermott. It was 61-58 and for perhaps the first time all day, the capacity crowd at Cintas Center was quiet. Moments later, they were back on their feet after Dee Davis answered with a high-arching three to push the lead back out to six, and after a jumper by Jalen Reynolds made the lead eight with just over three minutes to play, the game was all but over.

Somewhat surprisingly, the things you’d figure would be the key against Xavier — rebounding, taking away dribble penetration, slowing them down in transition — were mostly OK. The two teams were essentially even on the boards (34-32 XU), essentially even on points in the paint (28-26 XU) and Xavier was able to score a little in transition but not as much as they’re capable of. This game was won and lost by the guards. Creighton took 34 shots from three-point range and made 10 (29.4%), well below their season average of 42.1%. Xavier was 9-16 (56.3%), well above their season average both in terms of percentage (37.7%) and number of threes made (5 per game), and at one point was 8-10 from deep. Austin Chatman and Jahenns Manigat were a combined 2-16 from the floor and 1-10 from long range, while their counterparts, Semaj Christon and Dee Davis, were a combined 13-27 from the floor and 6-9 from three-point range for 36 points with 8 assists.

The loss was also costly because of a gruesome injury to Isaiah Zierden, whose foot was inadvertently stepped on while making a cut. For some reason, FS1 insisted on showing replay after replay of his knee exploding, much to the horror of everyone I was watching the game with (and I’m sure everyone you were, as well). It’s officially diagnosed as a dislocated patella with possible ligament damage, with confirmation to come once an MRI is performed. He’s almost certainly done for the year, and that’s a huge blow. Zierden had emerged over the last two or three weeks as a trusted member of the rotation, providing consistent minutes off the bench spelling the starting guards, combining a good shooting stroke with great court savvy. Hopefully the injury doesn’t rob him of too much development time this spring and summer; the way he played before the injury, he was setting himself up to be a big contributor next year.

Quotables:

“Turnovers hurt us a lot. That’s a formula for losing on the road, and that’s the one thing you can point a finger at in terms of what we could have done a lot better, taking care of the ball. We had a lot of unforced errors. Sometimes it comes down to making and missing shots, but I hate that excuse for us. I think we play like that sometimes and it hurts us. The other parts of the game become so important when that’s the story…we allow missing shots to affect other parts of the game. But we were right there. We got it down to three, and just couldn’t make enough plays down the stretch. Bottom line, you have to account for the turnovers putting us in a bad situation on the road.” -Grant Gibbs on 1620AM Postgame

“We’ll watch the tape, break down what we did wrong, but gosh, we’re in such an extraordinary situation regardless. I don’t think we came out here and played like we were playing for a Big East regular season championship. Whatever seed is on the line, we’re in uncharted territory for Creighton. We just have to value that. We don’t have a lot of games left together. We have to come out swinging, flying around, and value the situation because the reality is there’s a handful of teams that are where we’re at, so we need to take advantage of that and play like it from the tip. We didn’t do that tonight.” -Grant Gibbs on 1620AM Postgame

“It’s disappointing. You have to give them a lot of credit, they played a lot better in defensive transition than us. We have to hold on to that ball like it’s gold. We had too many careless turnovers. And we settled for too many threes. I take part of the blame for that, because they weren’t switching my ball screens so my eyes kind of lit up a little bit there. I settled for some threes instead of posting up more.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“You have to give them credit, this was a big game for them and a good resume win for them as the NCAA Tournament is on the line. People step up when the stakes are high, so you have to give them credit. That’s the way it’s going to be for us from here on out. After halftime, I thought we matched their intensity. We went on that little run. If we could have done that the whole game — we were battling on the boards, we were switching ball screens, we were being aggressive — that wasn’t really there to start the game. We have to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and do that for 40 minutes.” -Doug McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“We had good looks, and we didn’t make them. We don’t usually turn it over, and we turned it over a lot tonight. Too many of those turnovers led to easy baskets on the other end. For whatever reason, we weren’t quite ourselves offensively. I’m not sure we had the fight early in the game that we needed on the defensive end. It got better in the second half, and they didn’t quit, they kept battling.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“As you know, I’m a guy that plays percentages a lot. Semaj Christon has made two 3-point shots since our last game, and he makes two today, in much the same way other people were guarding him. Dee Davis, we were late getting to him a few times, and Martin hit a couple of tough ones. But they shot it well from deep and they usually don’t, we usually shoot it well and we didn’t. We just couldn’t have both of those things happen at the same time.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“I thought we had some casual turnovers. We wanted to play fast, but I thought for the first time in a while we were in a hurry. We almost got ahead of ourselves. We’ve got to take a look at that and try to get better. Obviously, we’re going to have to have some guys step up.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“Our guards didn’t shoot it well. Jahenns played well except for shooting. Four assists, no turnovers, he competed his tail off defensively, but he didn’t make shots. Austin had an uncharacteristic game for him. I thought Devin did some good things, but had a couple plays where he got sloppy and it got away from him.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

“It’s difficult to stay focused in the moment. It’s so difficult with social media, because what am I going to do, take their phones away? You know, it’s all out there. Fans are tweeting about it, the media is tweeting about it, and our guys see that. You see it enough, you start to believe it. I don’t feel like there’s a problem. They show up in practice. They believe in themselves. There’s a confidence there that’s not arrogance, it’s confidence because they’ve prepared well and paid the price, they’ve sacrificed, they’ve wanted this to be a special season and it has been. It still can be a very special season. This is just a little bump in the road. We just have to make sure that’s all it is.” -Coach Greg McDermott on 1620AM Postgame

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