Ronnie Harrell had a career night and had the opportunity to play a lot of minutes in the win (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Greg McDermott admitted that the game right before Christmas break always scares him, because you just can’t predict where the players will be mentally with time off coming up. Redshirt freshman Ronnie Harrell Jr. put his head coach’s worries to rest with a career night in practically every statistical category. The 6-foot-7 guard out of Denver, Colo., played 25 minutes off the bench and scored 14 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, and dished out five assists, including one from his rear end after diving on loose ball, spinning, and flipping a ball to his junior point guard Maurice Watson Jr. for a break away bucket late in the second half.
Harrell’s breakout game stood out among four other Bluejays who scored in double figures as Creighton downed North Texas, 105-82, in front of 17,518 fans at the CenturyLink Center on Monday night.
“The game before Christmas break is always a scary game. That’s just the reality. It’s human nature to be excited to get home and see your family, and obviously these guys are anxious to be able to do that,” McDermott said. “Ronnie gave us a big lift with Cole’s foul trouble.”
After scoring seven points in the first five minutes to help the Bluejays jump out to a 21-11 lead, junior forward Cole Huff picked up his second personal foul and had to go to the bench. Harrell subbed in for Huff and made an immediate impact off the bench. In his first three minutes on the floor he scored four points and pulled down three rebounds to keep the lead at double digits.
“I think I did pretty good,” Harrell said of how he crashed the glass. “Geoff and Zach did a good job boxing people out; the whole team really did a good job of getting their man, so I was able to come in and clean up a few easy ones.”
Missing time with a foot injury put Harrell behind as it was, but with sophomore forward Toby Hegner out with an ankle injury, freshman forward Martin Krampelj out for the season, and Huff sidelined with foul trouble, the redshirt freshman had even more of a challenge moving to the depleted four spot on the floor.
“I was trying to remember all of the plays after moving to a new position,” Harrell said. “It’s a pretty big adjustment banging with the big guys down low. Last game I had to fight with [Oklahoma senior forward Ryan Spangler] the whole time, so I just have to be able to fight and help out the team as much as I can. That’s what I’m here to do.”
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Zach Hanson had a nice game for the Bluejays as they dominated the paint in the victory (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
He had some help down low against the Mean Green on Monday night. Senior center Geoffrey Groselle scored 15 of his career-high 27 points in the first half to help the Bluejays take a 54-39 halftime lead. The fifth-year senior went 3-of-4 from the field, and hit 9-of-10 at the free throw line to pile up the points. In a first half that saw officials call 27 fouls, the Bluejays converted 24 of 29 free throw attempts in the opening 20 minutes.
Huff picked up another foul quickly in the second half, and Harrell picked up where he left in the first half. He played 14 minutes after halftime, adding six points and six rebounds to his total along with all five of his assists to make sure North Texas didn’t get any closer than 13 points the rest of the way.
Sitting at 12 points and nine rebounds with just under nine minutes remaining in the game, Harrell pulled down a defensive rebound. To celebrate his first career double-double he raced down court, crossed over to his left hand to beat a North Texas defender, and threw down a one-handed dunk in transition. That gave the Bluejays an 86-65 lead with 8:39 to go. Three minutes later he brought the crowd to their feet again when he dove for a loose ball along the right sideline. He scooped up the ball, spun to his back and heaved a pass into the back court to Maurice Watson Jr. that led to an uncontested layup.
“Obviously you saw what he could do off the dribble and his decisions with passes,” McDermott said of his redshirt freshman. “He gives us another element there that’s really positive for our team.”
One year to the date that Creighton put up 58 total points and dropped a head-scratcher against the Mean Green before Christmas break, the Bluejays kept the pedal to the floor for 40 minutes in the rematch to ensure they would go into the holiday on a positive note. Along with Groselle’s career-high 27 points and Harrell’s career-high 14 points, the Bluejays got a career-high 13 points out of backup center Zach Hanson, another 13 out of Cole Huff, and 16 points out from Maurice Watson Jr. to round out the double-figure scores.
On a night when they were only 4-of-17 from the three-point line, they got 85 points in the paint and at the free throw line to make up for it.
“We have a fifth-year senior and a junior in there that have played a lot of basketball for us,” McDermott said, highlighting the 40 points he got down low out of Groselle and Hanson. “I think they can score, and I think they can draw fouls. What happens in the first half needs to happen more often. We were really aggressive off the dribble. We were aggressive in the post, and we were good with getting the ball into the post. I like the fact that we took what the defense gave us tonight. We didn’t jack up a bunch of three-point shots, and we got touches to Geoff and Zach, and got it to Cole in the middle of that zone, and he made some things happen. It was a good offensive game — we scored 105 points in 80 possessions. That’s going to win a lot if you’re that efficient.”
While the offense did it’s job again, scoring at least 90 points for the sixth time this season, the defensive inconsistencies also showed up again. North Texas became the third team to score more than 80 points against the Bluejays, and that doesn’t include Arizona State, Texas-San Antonio, Rutgers, and UMass, who all came a possession or two away from reaching that 80-point mark.
“Me and Zach in particular, our ball screen defense needs to be better,” Groselle said. “Without a doubt teams see that and they try to exploit it every game, and we need to get better. Secondly, with our guards we need to get better at guarding the dribble without fouling. I don’t know how many team fouls we had today, but it wasn’t good. They were getting into the paint very easily and getting easy points, and that’s one of the main things that hurt our defense.”
“We know what we need to fix and we know we can get better, so we’re going to improve and move forward.”
McDermott has not wavered in his acknowledgement that his team’s offensive execution is what will carry the team most nights, but that isn’t stopping him from holding his players accountable for shortcomings on the defensive end of the court.
“The three practices [after the break] are really important,” McDermott said. “I told the guys, ‘Go enjoy the time with your family, but start thinking about how much we need to improve on December 25th, 26th, 27th leading up to that Coppin State game, and then the two practices prior to St. John’s.’ We have to make some really good strides, and any confusion that we have defensively — things that we don’t understand, that we haven’t made clear enough as a coaching staff — those problems need to be addressed. They need to be fixed, so when you guys are on the floor you can figure it out on your own.”
“That will be a big focus along with tinkering with the offense and just continuing to make it better. We’ve talked before, we’d love to be better defensively, but that isn’t what we built this team on. We built this team on the ability to score and be skilled, and I think we showed that tonight, but our inconsistencies on defense are leading to the frustration. It’s not the same guy every play doing the same thing. It’s guys doing it correctly five times then having a break down on the sixth, and that’s where we have to clean it up. Some of it’s just personal pride, being tough enough to know that I’m going to do what I have to do so I don’t need help, but I also understand that the help is back there and I trust my help, but I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure I don’t need that help. That’s where we have to get. We’re better one-on-one defensively than we’re showing at times, it just takes a lot of concentration, a lot of focus, and a lot of effort to make that happen.”
Listen to the full postgame press conference with head coach Greg McDermott and players Ronnie Harrell and Geoffrey Groselle