It’s been more than a decade since Creighton’s men’s basketball team lost consecutive Missouri Valley Conference home games. January 1999, to be exact. Qwest Center crowds have never witnessed the Bluejays drop two or more Valley home games in a row. Until now.
One week after Missouri State clawed back from a double-digit deficit to defeat the Jays in Omaha, Gregg Marshall’s Wichita State Shockers overcame a 6-point deficit and posted the largest margin of victory by a team visiting the Qwest Center (14) since the building opened.
Greg McDermott’s team scored 55 points against the Bears and 54 points against the Shockers. Faced with such a challenged offense, the defense has to be perfect. Unfortunately, Cuonzo Martin has multiple playmakers. So does Marshall. The common bond the two frontrunners in the Valley share is painfully obvious to MVC teams they leave in their wake: athletic and balanced rosters that can both score and defend for a full 40 minutes.
Through the first 20 minutes Wednesday night, the Bluejays and Shockers seemed destined to quench the thirst of fans hoping for an intense nail-biter. The Jays led by 3 at halftime, having forced Wichita State to shoot 36% from the field and a dismal 9% from 3-point range (1-11). CU snagged four steals in the half and forced 7 WSU turnovers. As I tweeted during halftime, it seemed the Bluejays had Marshall’s team right where they wanted WSU: locked in a defensive struggle, similar to the game the Shox dropped last Sunday against Missouri State.
But no good thing lasts forever, be that $1 beers or the top scoring team in the Valley shooting well below its season average or ability. And just as Missouri State did a week ago, the visiting Shockers fought through shooting woes while turning up their own defensive pressure to flip the script on the stunned Bluejays.
The Shockers shot 56% from the field in the second half and calmly hit 11 of their 13 free throw attempts. The Bluejays, meanwhile, hit 36% of their shots. And while the difference between those two percentages is definitely pronounced, in person the disparity was even more obvious. Wichita State’s shots seemed to come with ease, much the same way Missouri State ran lay-up drills down the lane during the Bears’ second-half comeback. Conversely, Creighton constantly fought to try and find good shots. The Shox, taller than their CU counterparts at almost every position, challenged shot attempt after shot attempt, after denying the Jays what they wanted to establish offensively in the first place.
The result of Marshall’s defensive strategy, and his team’s pressure, included limiting Creighton’s front court starters Doug McDermott (7), Kenny Lawson (4), and Gregory Echenique (5) to fewer field goal attempts combined than Antoine Young (18) attempted himself. Young didn’t fare well in that endeavor, making just 4 shots and missing all of his 3-point attempts. Plus, he didn’t draw a single free throw attempt. He didn’t commit a turnover, compared to 4 assists, so I don’t buy some CU fans’ argument that he made a bunch of bad decisions. If his teammates are guarded and the offense isn’t even getting into a set until there are 18 seconds left on the shot clock, what else can he do but shoot?
That’s surely what Marshall and his coaching staff, thought, right? Kaleb Korver knocked down a few 3s, and freshman Jahenns Manigat made as many 3s in the first half (2) as he did up to that point in the team’s first five Valley games. But other than a Lawson trifecta, the Ghost of Ethan Wragge haunted McDermott’s team once again.
But let’s be honest. Some teams just aren’t going to set the nets on fire game after game. But as college basketball players there are some things you can control: mental toughness chief among them. That’s a term Creighton fans read/saw/heard plenty of following the largest home loss in the history of Creighton playing at the Q. Mental toughness. It means boxing out every trip down the court. It means working through stifling defense, even if you think you’re being held or grabbed or knocked around. It means finding a way to deal with an opponent’s scoring run. White outs don’t help teams forge this type of toughness. Dollar beer discounts don’t help, either. This isn’t an issue with the crowd, or the marketing of a program. It is simply something that happens organically — or not.
Both Wichita State and Missouri State showed, not just during their early games with Creighton, that they play with a certain level of mental toughness. Down by double-digits, especially on the road, some teams would fold. Not Missouri State. And with a hostile building full of fans wanting only to beat Wichita, some teams would lose focus at the first sign of trouble. Not this season’s Shockers.
I could sit here and write that Creighton is close to those teams, not too far from where the fans and players and coaches want them to be, because of the Bluejays’ leads over those teams in Omaha. CU is winning games on the road (although their victories are against teams that sit a combined 7-17 in MVC play after Wednesday night), so that is a great sign, no doubt. But the reality is that the Jays lost to the two best teams in the conference by an average of 13 points (comparatively, Creighton’s 21 home losses at the Qwest Center are by an average of 6.5 points). They only scored an average of 54.5 points in those two games, too.
Could Creighton beat WSU or MSU on any given night? Sure. But right now, compared to those two rosters with those two coaches, the Bluejays must be closer to perfect than their counterparts to seriously entertain that notion. One-third of the way through Valley play, the Jays look the part of the third of fourth best team in the conference. Had the team been tougher mentally for a full 40 minutes against both Wichita State and Missouri State, the reality might be different. The ability is there, but it must be met and matched by the will to withstand another team’s comeback, or the ability to seize an opportunity and run away with it, instead of letting it slip away.
Two-thirds of the conference season remains: can Creighton discover the consistent mental toughness needed to supplant the two teams that now have head-to-head road wins over the Bluejays?