Tonight, I took my wife and the two kids to the Qwest Center for the first home game of the season. Sometimes it takes a full night of food to keep the little one completely occupied, but tonight, but he couldn’t be distracted enough to sit and watch the game. I couldn’t either at times. The Jays were up 20 by halftime, extended the lead to 32 and then went through a stretch in the final 9 minutes of the game scoring only 8 points to leave with a 78-53 win, their first of the season.
Florida A&M is not Dayton, so the intensity level of the players as well as the fans isn’t as great as it would be for a more competitive game. To be completely honest, I almost didn’t feel any different at the game tonight than I have for the two exhibitions that I attended previously. It was an Exhibition game atmosphere. The intensity wasn’t there at times, the fan support wasn’t there, the music wasn’t very loud and the same referees were in the building that did the Nebraska-Hastings College exhibition game last week. So it was really hard to get completely into the game. And I suppose that could be the excuse of the Creighton basketball team and another setback in fixing their rebounding woes and also trying to stay away from the injury bug.
Creighton was out rebounded by one of the worst teams in the nation last season in rebounding margin 41-37 although Creighton was up 19-17 in rebounding in the first half. Other than Wayne Runnels in the 2nd half with 7 rebounds (he led with 9 total), the rest of the team only came up with 11 more in the second stanza.
One of the highlights of the night was another strong performance by Darryl Ashford. He has been the most consistent of all the players on offense in all four games leading he team with a slick 17 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, a steal and a block. Ethan Wragge also put in a solid performance after some big baskets in the Dayton game to have shooting practice from three and getting 16 points of his own. The newcomers continue to make names for themselves.
Then you have P’Allen Stinnett. I felt that he spent the night looking for his teammates. He only finished with 7 points but had 5 nice assists. And to be honest he could have easily had 15 assists as he had some great passes to teammates that they did not finish at the hoop, thus missing out on more assists. I walked away quite impressed with his team first mentality this season so far.
Antoine Young went down in the middle of the second half as he was standing on the sidelines as it appeared he might have tweaked his knee again. Hopefully not. The team doesn’t need anymore injuries right now especially going into Arkansas-Little Rock on Sunday before heading to Orlando for the Old Spice Classic.
But back to the original title of this post–Back to School. As much as I thought the team learned against Dayton, tonight showed that there is still a lot to be learned by this team and that they still have some things that need to be worked out. What do you all think? Does the team benefit more for playing games against teams like Dayton or like Florida A&M? I felt like after the Dayton game, that a lot was learned from that experience, but after tonight’s game against the Rattlers, it is back to school and see what kind of performance happens Sunday. So maybe these types of games do have some teaching to them.