Three years ago, St. Joseph’s came to Omaha and the result was one of the highlights of the season: a spirited, back-and-forth affair that resulted in the Jays winning in overtime, 90-84. That Hawks team had been the youngest of Phil Martelli’s career at St. Joseph’s the previous year, and by December of 2007 when they rolled into the Qwest Center, they were a year older, and were growing into a great team. Led by all-A10 players Pat Calathes and Ahmad Nivins, the Hawks would get an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament after finishing 21-12.
As the Jays get set to welcome the Hawks in tomorrow night, they find a team once again filled with young players, but instead of catching them in Year Two when they’re more experienced and consistent, this time around they’re catching them in Year One. Its an extraordinarily talented group of players, but as you’d expect with a team that has five freshmen — and three starters — in its 10-man rotation, they have moments where they look amazing, and moments where they look awful.
Wednesday night the Hawks fell behind the 20th ranked Gophers 36-26 after shooting an atrocious 23.1% in the first half. They came out scalding hot in the second half, though, and led by sophomore Carl Jones’ 23 second-half points, darn near pulled off a comeback and an upset win. They shot 53% in that second half as they mounted a comeback, a perfect microcosm of their season so far — 20 minutes of awful play followed by 20 minutes of amazing play.
Last week against #12 Villanova, they led for most of the first half, before things turned south and Villanova used a big run to take a 38-28 lead into the break. The Wildcats ultimately built a 20-point lead before St. Joe’s got hot, rattled off a 9-0 run on consecutive three-pointers, and climbed back into the game. Carl Jones again led the way, scoring 19 points, while freshman C.J. Aiken blocked seven shots. Yes, seven. He had the bigger, stronger Big East-tested Wildcat post players reeling, as he blocked just under 10% of their shot attempts (its crazy to think about it in those terms, but they attempted 65 shots and Aiken blocked seven of them. That’s 9.2%. Insane, right? Insane.)
So obviously when they’re playing well, they have the talent to play with even the best teams in America; the problem is getting 40 minutes of that on a consistent basis. Given Martelli’s reputation as a great coach, there’s little doubt they’ll get there eventually, and by next year the Hawks will likely be back on top of the A10 and in the NCAA Tournament. The return game of this series in Philadelphia next year will be ridiculous. The game tomorrow night might not match up two great teams at the top of their respective leagues, as next year’s might, but it will be a tremendous game and test for both teams — the Jays to see if they can rebound from three straight losses against a pretty good opponent, and the Hawks to see if they can put 40 minutes together in front of a raucous Saturday night crowd.
Meanwhile, Creighton comes off a week in which they lost three games, saw their preseason MVC Player of the Year come under attack for lackluster play, and saw the new coaching staff take their first real criticism. Ordinarily, you’d think such a scenario would be a season crossroads, but the game with St. Joseph’s is the last they will play without Gregory Echenique, their fabulous center transfer from Rutgers, so its almost closer to a trap game than a crossroads. Fans are looking ahead to next week when Echenique makes his debut; one of the WBR authors even has a “Countdown to Echenique” clock on his computer desktop. Coaches are looking ahead to his debut and have started integrating him with the starters in practice, as articles in the World-Herald have alluded to. Are the players looking ahead to next week, too? St. Joseph’s record is deceiving. They’re a good team, and if the Jays are looking past them to Echenique’s debut next week, they may be in for a surprise.
One Big Paragraph with Lots O’Dots™: St. Joseph’s leading scorer, Carl Jones, has scored double figures in 11 straight games dating back to last season, and has notched 20-plus points in four of the last five. Jones leads the Hawks with his 18.8 scoring average, which ranks fifth in the A-10, and is the team’s top free throw shooter, converting 82.1% … In the four games of December, Jones has converted 50% (33-for-66) from the field and 48% (12-for-25) from 3-point range, while averaging 23 points per game … The backcourt of Carl Jones and Langston Galloway combined to score 50 of the Hawks’ 73 points vs. Minnesota, while also totalling nine of the team’s 13 assists and seven of the 10 steals. The duo made all nine of the team’s 3-pointers and 14 of the 25 field goals … Hawks freshman C.J. Aiken ranked sixth in the nation in blocked shots at the start of this week and is now second in the Atlantic 10 with 3.2 per game … Saint Joseph’s is coached by Phil Martelli, who owns a 292-193 record in his 16th year with the Hawks. He is a four-time Atlantic-10 Conference Coach of the Year and in 2004 was named consensus National Coach of the Year after leading the Hawks to the nation’s first undefeated regular-season since 1990-91 … Creighton freshmen Doug McDermott is tied for the national lead among freshmen with double-figure scoring games through Friday, with eight, tying him with Duke phenom Kyrie Irving … Since 2000-01, Creighton has lost consecutive games on just 24 occasions, but only four of those streaks (including the current skid) stretched to three or longer. Creighton’s last losing streak of four straight games was Dec. 23, 1999 – Jan. 6, 2000. That Creighton team finished 23-10 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament … Creighton has lost a total of 22 home games in the last 11 seasons, and has followed all but one of its previous 21 home losses with a win in its next home game by an average of 16.19 points, including 12 double-digit triumphs … Since February of 2000, Creighton has suffered consecutive home losses just once, as it fell Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, 2004 to Kent State and Wyoming, respectively.
The Last Time They Played: On December 6, 2008, Creighton played St. Joseph’s at the legendary Palestra. It was the Booker Woodfox Show, as the senior guard made 7-of-9 three-pointers, scored a career-best 29 points, and grabbed a career high seven rebounds in the 69-58 win. The Jays hit 13-of-28 three-pointers during the win, and drained six trifectas in the first half while building a 32-20 lead at intermission. Trailing 11-8 early, CU unleashed a 10-0 run fueled by treys from Kaleb Korver and Woodfox to take the lead for good.
The Series: Saint Joseph’s leads the all-time series with Creighton 4-3, but the Bluejays are 2-1 in Omaha. After a 26-year gap, the teams will be playing for the third time in four years. All seven previous meetings have been decided by 11 points or less.
Greg McDermott has never faced Saint Joseph’s and Phil Martelli, though McDermott is 2-0 in his career against the Atlantic-10. Martelli is 0-2 in his career against Creighton.
Bob Harstad: Over the summer, I started an ambitious series called “What’s in a Number?” where I profiled the best player to wear each number for the Jays. Thankfully, many of my fellow WBR writers jumped in and contributed to the series, including Otter, who wrote a fantastic piece on Bob Harstad. Otter then caught up with Harstad this week for an outstanding interview about his career. Out of all the players in the series we deemed to be the best to have worn their number, there were only a few that we thought deserved to have their jersey hang in the rafters (metaphorically speaking; I doubt they’ll do anything as cool as actually hang a banner in the arena.) Harstad was at the top of all our lists.
Bob Portman, whose number 33 has long been retired, may have been a more prolific scorer. Paul Silas, whose number 35 has long been retired, may have been a more prolific rebounder. And Bob Gibson, whose number 45 has long been retired, is the most famous athlete to play for the Jays. But as a commenter said here yesterday, Harstad was probably the greatest pound-for-pound player in program history, continues to be a fantastic representative of the university, and along with Chad Gallagher, ushered in the first Golden Era of Creighton hoops in the modern era (post-1985). It was long overdue to have his jersey hanging in the rafters, and it will be a wonderful ceremony Saturday night at halftime.
The Alumni Game: The last time an Alumni Game took place, to the best of my recollection, is in the early-90s when Tony Barone was still coaching. On Saturday at 3:30 down at Sokol Arena, two teams of former greats will once again lace ’em up in what should be a pretty entertaining game. Here’s the full list of players tentatively slated to battle it out:
- Brett Angner
- Nick Bahe
- Brody Deren
- Josh Dotzler
- Nate Funk
- Bob Harstad
- Justin Haynes
- Pierce Hibma
- Jim Honz
- Mark Jones
- John Klein
- Dan Kolder
- Jim Maher
- James “Bimbo” Pietro
- Livan Pyfrom
- Edward St. Fleur
- Ryan Sears
- Dustin Sitzmann
- Joel Templeman
- Matt West
- Ted Wuebben
That’s a pretty good list, isn’t it? Should be a fun game. I’m certainly looking forward to it.
Gratuitous Linkage: Last Christmas, I bought myself a gift: the Ultimate James Bond DVD Box Set. It has double-disc versions of every movie in the series, one for the movie and one for special features. Over the past year, I’ve watched all of them, in order of their release, which makes it kind of fun to compare and contrast them all. Two surprises to me have been how absolutely dominant “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” is — put Sean Connery in that role instead of George Lazenby and that’s the greatest Bond movie ever, no doubt about it — and how much I enjoyed “The Living Daylights” now, because I remember it being horrible when it came out.
ANYWAY, about a month ago I finally made it up to “A View To a Kill”, and watched it on a random Tuesday night. Pretty shaky movie, on the whole, despite the presence of Christopher Walken. But in it, Bond assumes the name “James St. John Smythe”, only he pronounces it “Sin-Jin-Smythe.” Every time Roger Moore said his name, it cracked me up. And it also got my former-Journalism-major brain wondering how in the hell it was spelled. Seriously, this bothered me the entire rest of the movie. So immediately afterward I went online and did some research, finding out the name is actually the disappointingly boring “St. John”, and is merely pronounced oddly because of Moore’s accent.
While I’m on Google looking up the spelling, I discover that there’s a horror movie in production called “Sin-Jin Smythe”, an homage to the Bond character. This movie stars Roddy Piper, the lead singer of Korn, the guitarist from The Cult, and Jenna Jameson. Seriously, this is a real thing.
Out of Context Simpsons quote: “Son, when you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or lose: it’s how drunk you get.” -Homer Simpson
This Date in Creighton Hoops History: Kellen Miliner hit a 15-foot jumper with 0.7 seconds left to lift Creighton past Nebraska, 50-48, on December 11, 2004. The win was Creighton’s third straight in Lincoln and sixth in the last seven meetings overall in the series. Creighton was paced by 20 points from Miliner, who hit 7-of-13 shots from the floor and 4-of-7 shots from three-point range. Nate Funk added 13 points and five rebounds, while Dane Watts contributed seven points off the bench.
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day: In honor of Bob Harstad, one half of Creighton’s Dynamic Duo, its “Batdance” from Prince. This will now be stuck in your head all day. You’re welcome.
Prediction: The Jays come out cold again, just like they did against Nebraska, and fall behind early but rally in front of a huge, rowdy Saturday night crowd.
Jays 72, St. Josephs 67