Paid attendance inside the CenturyLink Center Tuesday night was 18,073, representing the fourth-largest crowd in Creighton hoops history. A third straight sellout crowd witnessed one of the biggest blowout wins in CU’s recent conference history.
Creighton’s 30-point victory over Drake was the Bluejays’ largest margin in a Missouri Valley Conference win since January 2003, when Kyle Korver and the Jays beat Evansville by 37, 93-56. Korver scored 31 points, hitting a school-record 9 three-pointers against the Aces (He did it all in 22 minutes — unreal.).
Ethan Wragge attempted his best Korver impression against Drake, falling a few makes short of matching Kyle’s school record for triples in a game. Wragge hit 6 of 9 three-point attempts against the Bulldogs and added a few layups, too, matching a career high with 22 points.
Wragge missed his first two attempts from long range. But his first three-pointer gave the Jays a 20-2 lead and forced Drake head coach Mark Phelps to burn his second 30-second timeout with a little less than 6 minutes gone in the first half. Wragge’s shot was Creighton’s 7th made field goal in 10 attempts to start the game. Amazingly, for the next 34 minutes, the Jays nearly kept up their 70% shooting pace.
Creighton finished the 30-point rout of their longest standing rival with a 64.2% shooting percentage, a few tenths of a percentage point behind a season-high 64.8% against Longwood. CU made a season-best 59% of its three-point attempts, drilling a season-high 16 threes. Thanks to the 16 makes, no team in the country has made more threes that Creighton (159), and no team has made them at a higher percentage (44.9%).
Greg McDermott regularly plays seven guys. Of those seven, six have attempted a three-pointer this season (sorry, Gregory Echenique). Of those six, five shoot better than 41% from three-point range (sorry, Grant Gibbs (33%)). And against the Bulldogs, those five guys — Austin Chatman (1-1), Doug McDermott (2-3), Ethan Wragge (6-9), Jahenns Manigat (3-4), and Avery Dingman (1-4) — went 13-21 from long range.
Creighton’s offensive efficiency and production is downright overwhelming right now. The Bluejays assisted on a season-high 28 of 34 made shots against Drake. Chatman dropped 9 dimes for the second consecutive game and improved his assist-to-turnover ratio to 2.2-to-1. That puts him in the top third nationally, but is nowhere near the 4.52-to-1 ratio of his teammate Gibbs.
Throw the third primary guard, Manigat, into the mix, and the starting backcourt for the Bluejays average 13.1 assists a game. With Doug McDermott finishing inside and out, and Echenique making about two-thirds of all his attempts, CU’s guards need just facilitate for the big fellas. But the fact that Creighton’s perimeter players can all knock down a high percentage of three-point shots will leave opposing coaches sleepless and their players frustrated to no end.
That’s what Tuesday looked like, judging by the faces and shoulders of the Drake staff and bench. Using 30-second timeouts early in the game only delayed the inevitable for Phelps and the Bulldogs. And I’m not sure I’ve seen a more dejected set of guys jog off the court and into the locker room at halftime this season.
But what could they do? Phelps said it in the post-game press conference. Wragge’s threes weren’t exactly wide open; a DU defender was pressuring him on at least four of his makes. Wragge doesn’t need a lot of room to hit from deep. Neither does McDermott. And if teams are going to guard against the Jays feeding Echenique and McDermott in the post, then Gibbs and Chatman and Manigat are more than capable of hitting from deep against a sagging defense.
Speaking of defense, at the end of last season CU opponents had hit 44.1% of their shots, putting the Jays 222nd in the country in field goal percentage defense. Through 16 games, following Drake’s poor shooting night (35.6% from the field, 32% from three-point range), the Jays are 69th in the nation in field goal defense (39.7%). On the year, only one opponent (Boise State) has shot better than 44% against the Jays (60.4%). That’s Creighton’s lone blemish through 16 games.
With such a drastic disparity between the two offenses, it came as no shock that Creighton significantly outrebounded Drake. Led by McDermott’s 7 caroms, Creighton out-boarded 40-22, a season-high +18 on the glass. Aside from McDermott, four other Jays had 4 or more rebounds, including Wragge (5 boards to go with his 22 points), Gibbs (5 boards to go with 10 points and 4 assists), and Echenique and Dingman (4 apiece).
Echenique didn’t have his best night as a Jay; he scored a season-low 2 points, or about 9 fewer than his season average. But he didn’t have to. He only played 19 minutes after playing 23 or more in his previous five games. With the game out of reach early, Echenique and the other starters earned extended time on the bench while some of the younger Bluejays got a chance to spread their wings.
Nevin Johnson took advantage, figuratively and a bit literally. The redshirt freshman swing man scored a career-high 9 points. His punctuated his offensive outburst with a resounding two-hand dunk, the result of an uber-quick dribble-drive on the baseline. Reserves Taylor Stormberg (7 minutes), Andre Yates (6 minutes), Geoffrey Groselle (5 minutes), Joe Kelling (2 minutes), Alex Olsen (2 minutes), and Mogboluwaga Oginni (2 minutes) joined Johnson (12 minutes) and Will Artino (10 minutes) at times as Coach Mac cleared his bench.
Creighton now turns its attention to Missouri State. The Bears host the Bluejays Friday night after sending Illinois State to a 0-4 start in MVC play with a 62-55 win Tuesday night in Springfield. After winning just 2 games in the non-conference start to the season, Paul Lusk’s MSU team is 3-1 in league play. Aside from the Redbirds’ disastrous start to conference play, the Bears are the surprise of the early Valley slate. Here’s hoping that the Bears don’t pull the shock of the season Friday against the heavily favored Bluejays.