Saturday was a “Pink Out” game, with the players wearing pink sneakers to raise awareness for cancer research and fans encouraged to wear pink shirts to support the cause. This was slightly problematic for yours truly, since the only way I could participate would be to stick a red shirt in the washer with my whites (on purpose, for once) to create a custom pink shirt, or wear my 1984 Don Johnson Pink blazer.
I went with the latter. Its a fine item of clothing that I bought for the bargain basement price of $6 at Goodwill a few years ago after to a trip to Miami Beach; with the sleeves pushed up and accompanied by a pair of oversized aviators and two-day stubble, all I was missing was the Ferrari (or, if you prefer the white car from Seasons Three through Five of the show, a Testarossa). Alas, the coat is quite hot — in the literal sense of the word — and I was beading up worse than the players even before tip off, causing me to ditch the jacket. So if you saw me on the video board wearing blue despite Facebook updates to the contrary, and I was inexplicably on the video board not once but twice, that’s the story.
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Saturday’s game continued a promising trend where, upon playing a team the second time, the Jays have played immensely better. The first team they had a second crack at was Missouri State, and the Jays took away everything that worked for the Bears during the first outing, darn near pulling off the improbable road upset. Indiana State was the second, and again, the Jays took away almost everything that worked for the Trees in Terre Haute. The driving lanes that Jake Odum exploited so mercilessly in the first matchup were taken away, for the most part — he had nine assists in that first game, and had just four on Saturday with three turnovers. Aaron Carter, who made 6-9 from behind the arc in that first game, took six heavily contested shots from behind the perimeter on Saturday and missed all of them.
Helped by a flurry of three-pointers and solid defensive stops, the Jays had jumped out to a 23-8 lead at the under-12 timeout. The fans responded with a well-deserved standing ovation, a rare occurrence so far this year. Then Indiana State immediately rattled off a 10-0 run to get back in the game, and suddenly the crowd was torn — some cheered encouragement, some felt a sense of “Oh oh, here we go again.”
For a good chunk of the afternoon, the crowd would remain in that sort of in-between stage, not really quiet but not really loud either. Then, midway through the second half when the referees got whistle-happy, the crowd found common ground and began loudly berating the zebras. They were completely out of control; both teams were in the double bonus with over eight minutes to play, and the final four minutes of game clock took nearly a half hour to complete. Seriously. I took out a stopwatch to check that alongside the game film, and the final four minutes took damn near 30 minutes to play. That’s ridiculous. This isn’t the plodding Big Ten; a regulation game should not take almost two and a half hours to complete.
Rant over.
Jahenns Manigat made his first career start, and finished with eight points, three rebounds, two assists, two steals and a charge taken. His big day was even bigger considering Antoine Young played himself into foul trouble, and logged “just” 28 minutes, a season low. Manigat took over the point duties and acquitted himself reasonably well; when Young checked out with his third foul at the 14 minute mark, the Jays led 46-40. Manigat, Daryl Ashford, Josh Jones, and Kenny Lawson — the B Team, as it were — blew the game wide open as Young, Greg Echenique and Doug McDermott watched from the bench. A scant two and a half minutes later, it was 55-40 Jays, and Indiana State was calling timeout to regroup.
With Gregory Echenique struggling mightily — the big fella had a tough week, playing with severe foul trouble at UNI and having trouble finding a rhythm against ISU Blue — it fell on Kenny Lawson to pick up the slack. And the preseason MVC Player of the Year was up to the task, particularly in the second half, when he helped fuel two big runs. In the second half alone, he had eight points, four rebounds and two blocks, one of which was launched like a missile deep into the student section.
While the bench was excelling, Doug McDermott was turning in another quietly excellent day. He had 25 points on 7-11 shooting, 3-5 from behind the arc, and 8-9 from the free throw line to go along with 7 rebounds, 4 assists and a steal. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s pretty good.
Against one of the top tier teams in the Valley, Creighton led wire-to-wire, the second time they’ve done that this year. The 47 points they scored after intermission were the most they’ve scored in a second half all season, and when Indiana State made their inevitible runs, as all good teams will, the Jays played through it, held the lead, then pulled away late. They scored 83 points, a season-high for a home game (only the 88 against Iowa State was better) and they shot better than 50% from the field in the second half for the second straight game. A pessimist would point out they shot just 31-41 from the free throw line; I’d point out they made 31 free throws while Indiana State only attempted 24.
And so, the Jays played much better in the rematch, again. If that trend continues — and given that it has against two of the top four teams in the league not named “Creighton”, you’ve got to be optimistic — they could be in for a nice run to close out league play.
You bet.