Everyone can now look to Florida. There I said it. The potential opportunity for Creighton to play some top conferences has been staring Creighton fans in the face for the past several months since it was announced soon after last year’s Old Spice Classic tournament that the Bluejays would be a part of it. While many have been looking forward to this tournament over this Thanksgiving, those same people have overlooked these games leading up to the tournament.
Tuesday nights game against Florida A&M was more like an exhibition with little energy, but Sunday’s game against Arkansas-Little Rock was a little more active with both the players and the fans. With the Teammates Mentoring program in attendance to push the paid attendance to over 16,000, they were not disappointed as Creighton avenged last season’s loss to the Trojans with an 80-65 win at the Qwest Center.
A key thing in today’s game was the long awaited appearances of Casey Harriman and Chad Millard. It was kind of nice to see them back on the court today. There were some disruptions in the flow of the game in the first half as they came into the game with Creighton up 18 points and UALR then went on a 15-2 run to cut the lead to five going into halftime, but it was important that they were able to get some minutes before the games in Orlando. They also got back in during the late part of the second half.
Kaleb Korver also broke out in this game a little bit. After hitting an early three-pointer, Kaleb showed a rejuvenation in his confidence as he picked things up on defense leading the team in steals with three and a couple rebounds along with his best scoring performance of the season going 4-of-8 from the downtown with 12 points.
In fact, you sort of felt the Bluejays were kind of toying with Arkansas-Little Rock throughout the game by being able to turn it on to start the second half and pull away. Five Bluejays were in double figures, with Kenny Lawson, P’Allen Stinnett, Antoine Young, Cavel Witter and Korver getting double digits. Lawson also got nine rebounds to come up just short of his first double-double of the season.
Everything that happened in last season’s game in Little Rock did not happen today. The team was playing together with 18 of 26 baskets with assists and winning the rebound battle. All in all, it was a nice solid win for Creighton today and I think they are ready to head to Florida. And if you add in Justin Carter’s new dew via Chad Millard’s Twitter, everyone was involved today.
Like I said, we can now all look towards Thanksgiving down in Orlando. Michigan is first up on the slate. They have played two patsy’s in Northern Michigan and Houston Baptist. They may be surprised about their first round matchup with the Jays. The Wolverines will have been off since Friday as well. We will learn more about this Creighton team come Thursday and I am really pumped as I am sure a lot of people are.