For more than a week, there have been a lot of doubters about the future of the Creighton men’s basketball season. First, the Bluejays lost a heartbreaking game at Northern Iowa on a last second shot. Then they had a quick turnaround to Evansville where they struggled from the field and despite holding scoring machine Colt Ryan to a horrible shooting night himself, left the Ford Center with a surprising loss. With one of the biggest games of the year in the balance, Creighton was taken out by the Wichita State train that blew through Omaha. The next thing you know, the MVC regular season championship looked like it had slipped through the Bluejays fingers and a lot of armchair coaches emerged.
It was easy for the national media, casual followers and the fans to overreact after the three game slide. While it was pretty disappointing, you have to take a step back and re-evaluate things. When you sit back and think about it from the 30,000 foot level, it has been an amazing season, one a majority of Creighton fans probably weren’t expecting. The Creighton fanbase is somewhat fragile after the latest drought of NCAA Tournament appearances. A lot of them were ready to call it a season and went so far as to start talking the NIT or CBI again on the message boards.
The next chance for redemption happened Tuesday night as the Bluejays made the always fun trip to Carbondale, Illinois to take on Southern Illinois–a team that has its own history of being successful over the years. But 2006 seems like eons ago.
With Salukiville still suffering through hard times, the Bluejays have turned things around in a seemingly short period of time. The difference in the directions of these two programs was very evident on Tuesday night. What stuck out even more was the cohesiveness of a team that was determined to get things back on track.
If there were any doubters out there, hopefully those thoughts were put to rest after the performance in Carbondale. Creighton came out shooting and did they ever put on a show. The shots that had trouble going down over the past couple of games did a complete 180. The Bluejays shot 77.5% for the game, which was a new MVC record, but it didn’t look quite as easy at the start. There was probably still a little doubt.
The game was close early and Doug McDermott went to the bench at the 10:30 mark of the first half with his second foul and Creighton was up 17-15. With the game going back and forth, the Bluejays went on a 13-5 run in the final four minutes of the half to take a nine point lead into halftime shooting 15-of-20 from the field.
So what did they do after halftime? Came out and shot even better. All of the Bluejays were clicking Tuesday night. They shot 16-of-20 from the field in the second half and ran away with 88-69 victory. For the game, Creighton only missed 9 shots. They also shot 12-of-14 from three point territory. After Southern Illinois gave up a 12-of-12 from behind the arc to Indiana State over the weekend, Saluki opponents have shot 24-of-26 from three point range over the past two games.
The scoring was balanced as well. Five Bluejays scored in double figures with McDermott leading the way with 18 on 7-0f-7 shooting, but close behind was Jahenns Manigat with 17, and Gregory Echenique, Antoine Young and Ethan Wragge all with 15 points. The five of them combined to shoot 28-of-34 from the field and 11-of-13 from three.
On Tuesday night, Creighton fans got to see the team they have watched all season come back together to build some great momentum heading into Bracketbusters weekend against Long Beach State. While fans might not have been excited about this matchup when it was announced a few weeks ago, they should be now as it could potentially help Creighton garner some national attention it might have lost. This game should be a good battle. The 49ers are very similar to Wichita State as they play a similar style and is a team full of veteran players. With the 9:00 p.m. start, this has the makings for an electric game, ones where fans can redeem themselves as well after their own poor showing last Saturday.
The Creighton men’s basketball team did their job to shake off the doubters. The question is, are you still a doubter or a supporter? Every team has their struggles through a long season. After this performance, it appears they just put their latest struggles to sleep.
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Those of you that know Creighton Sports Information Director, Rob Anderson, may know that he is a walking computer when it comes to statistics. You want to know the last time Creighton won a game in February when the temperature is over 40 degrees? He could tell you. Do you want to know the last time Doug McDermott scored on consecutive possessions with a left hook, right hook and spot up shot? He could probably tell you. I’m serious. You always will learn something reading the pregame game notes and just other tidbits talking to him.
On Tuesday night he joined T. Scott Marr to do the radio broadcast since normal partner Nick Bahe was on the television side of things. Anderson has done some radio games with baseball and volleyball, but this was his first with men’s basketball. He did a great job and it was very informative.
With the statistical mind he has, I can only imagine what it was like as the game went on when there were some records about to be broken. A person that is usually sharing statistical information with the rest of the stat crews, reporters and others in the arena before, during and after the games, it is an amazing feat to be able to still be able to work on the radio broadcast while likely looking up information to provide people after the game based on the Bluejay performance. Creighton fans may be clamoring after this for Anderson to do more men’s basketball games on the radio. The Jays are 1-0.
Between Anderson and associate SID Rob Simms, you won’t find a better sports information duo in the MVC or even the nation. You can take that to the bank.