2007-08 Game #3: Creighton 74, Nebraska 62

This year, the Thanksgiving weekend opponent was the hated Nebraska Cornhuskers. I was not going to miss this game, not after the Turkey Weekend Classics of the past two years, so I began preparing my family early -- in September, as soon as the schedule came out -- for the reality of me leaving before the end of the weekend. It wasn't easy.

Saturday morning, I meant to head out by 9am for the 175 mile drive across the two-lane highways of northwest Iowa. That would get me into Omaha around noon, with plenty of time to pick up my buddy Dick and to get to the arena for the 1pm tip. Of course, by the time I said goodbye to people and essentially forced my way out of the house, it was 9:45. Of course. Now, I'm no math major (and as a matter of fact, I failed Applied Mathematics during my first attempt at the course at CU), but if I drove the speed limit, that would get me back into Omaha at 12:45. Obviously, that wasn't going to work.

I'm not going to tell you I exceeded the posted speed limit by excessive amounts, but if I did it, I would have probably gotten back into Omaha around the same time I would have if I'd left at 9am. Did I exceed the posted limit by copious amounts of miles per hour? Well, I will tell you I crossed the Missouri at 12:03, and was in the parking lot at 12th and Capitol by 12:25. You be the judge.

As we settled into our seats, the fantastic Nick Bahe PSA came on the jumbotrons. The script for this video had gone through several edits, and it was awesome to see the final version incorporate copywriting by not only Original JaysBlog Gangsta Otter, but myself as well. You really had to see 17,000 people go from 90 decibels to stonecold silent to 100 decibels of uproarious laughter to believe it. Good stuff.

Then the lights went out, and the new Tunnelwalk that ProfessorX had worked so hard to re-produce debuted. As the video reached a crescendo, the entire crowd (or at least, the 15,000 non-red portion) began yelling "Lets Go Blue-Jays!" over and over, and the place exploded when the team came out of the tunnel. And for the first twenty minutes of the game, the crowd pretty much stayed at that level.

Nebraska is a young team, and this was their first road game. Actually, it was their first game in front of anything resembling a crowd. Their first three home games were played in front of a 1/3 full Devaney Center, and when there are more empty seats than not, it can hardly be considered a "crowd". That's an audience. Not a crowd.

Their inexperience showed. 17 first-half turnovers, a complete lack of energy, and they were run of the gym. But to give the credit for Creighton's 27-point halftime lead to the crowd is to give entirely too much credit to Slingblade, er, Doc Sadler. Now, Doc Sadler is without a doubt a great coach when compared to Barry Collier, but that's like saying a 49-cent hamburger from McDonalds is great compared to a 49-cent hamburger from White Castle. They both stink, but comparatively speaking, the former dominates the latter.

Make no mistake: the reasons Nebraska was blown out in the first half began and ended with the head coach. In September at the press conference announcing their schedule, he downplayed the Creighton game, going so far as to claim he didn't even know when they played -- nor did he care. Last week, he claimed the game was not a big deal -- calling it the "17th biggest game on our schedule." Tell your team that enough, and you get the sort of lackadaisical, take-a-win-for-granted effort that they got on Saturday. Quite succinctly, they played like it was the 17th biggest game of the year to them, which I can guarantee you it most certainly is not to the Jays.

Creighton came out and absolutely took the fight to a Husker team that was wholly unprepared for the onslaught. One coach told his team this was not a big game and that whether they won or lost, there were 16 bigger games to come regardless. One coach told his team this was a turf war, a brawl for bragging rights and for state pride. Guess which team won handily?

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I have an apology to offer. Many times in this space over the years, I've written about what a great talent Aleks Maric is. Last week, I wrote that he was perhaps the one player who posed a potentially impossible matchup for the Jays. That against an unproven frontcourt, Maric might have a field day.

Well, I'm happy to announce that not only was I wrong, but Maric is a fraud. He has the talent and the physical skills to be a dominant center, but has neither the heart nor the ambition to be a dominant center. Couple this with a coach who seems incapable of using him properly, and you get the sort of invisible performance that he offered on Saturday. Seriously, it looks to me as though Slingblade thinks of Maric as a millstone around his offenses' neck, a big slow post player in an offense designed to be fast-paced and perimeter-oriented. And because he's not a particularly great coach, he doesn't re-engineer his offense to fit his best players. He keeps trying to jam that square peg into that circle hole, and sometimes it smashes into place (like two years ago in his 38-point night against Iowa State), but most of the time it doesn't fit. Nebraska looked better WITHOUT their best player on the court during the vast stretches of the game where he rode the bench. Good times.

But enough about Nebraska.

From the opening tip, Creighton pressed and played tough in-your-face defense. To my surprise, Nebraska was able to break the press more often than not, but instead of running, they tried to set up into a half-court offense. Time after time, Creighton was able to force bad shots, anticipate passing lanes, and deny second chance looks. Despite SIX TURNOVERS in the first FOUR MINUTES, the Jays had just a 6-2 lead. I was a little uneasy, because it felt like their defense was rattling the Huskers, but their offense wasn't taking advantage. You have to kick your opponent when they're down, so to speak.

Back-to-back three pointers by Dane Watts and Booker Woodfox made it 12-4 at the 13 minute mark, and the Jays were off and running. The Huskers made a small run to make it 16-10, and for a brief moment, it felt like this was going to be a game. That the crowd had forced the Huskers into some turnovers early, given the Jays a lift, that both teams had taken their swings and now the battle was on.

I was wrong. Oh, sweet blissful blowout was I wrong. Back-to-back three pointers by Nick Bahe and Pierce Hibma ran the lead out to 22-10, and the game was, for all intents and purposes, over. Those buckets were the beginning of a 24-3 run that saw the lead grow from 16-10 to 40-13 in just over six minutes. During that six minute run, I've never heard the Qwest Center louder. At one point, the silly guy in front of me gave me a dirty look because I was "yelling too loudly". Whatever. Go watch the game at home, dude.

It struck me that during the first half, Creighton looked an awful lot like Southern Illinois. Their defensive effort was simply outstanding, contesting not only every shot but every pass. Every thing the Huskers did (or in this case, didn't do) they had to work for, and as Matt Perrault noted on his postgame show, the Huskers don't have the point guard to handle that kind of pressure. 17 turnovers forced, the second-biggest halftime lead in the history of the building, and the second-most first half points in the history of the building.

Now, Dana Altman always finds things to gripe about, and that's one of the things we all love about him. But when the Jays emerged from the locker room with almost six minutes left in the halftime break, it was obvious he didn't have much to complain about. On the other hand, Nebraska didn't emerge until almost five minutes later.

The second half saw Nebraska outscore the Jays by fifteen points, 42-27. Reasons for this seem to run the gamut, from Perrault's contention that the team was gassed due to them not being in "game shape" to Nebraska fans' contention that their second half proved they actually are the better team.

Fact of the matter is, with a 27-point lead, the Creighton game plan changed. The Jays are not the New England Patriots, and they do not play to beat people by the most points possible. They didn't play to win by 50, they played to win. Slowing down the pace of play, they changed the game because continuing to play the breakneck pace of the first half was simply unnecessary.

When the game did speed up, Cavel Witter was the star. The sophomore point guard scored ten second-half points, and his athleticism gave the Jays the boost they needed when Josh Dotzler rode the bench with foul trouble.

Polyfro Player Of The Game:

P'Allen Stinnett provided the play of the game with his poster dunk over Shang Ping, who had cheap-shotted Stinnett in the groin earlier in the game. I'm not exaggerating when I say this was unequivocally and without a doubt the greatest dunk I've seen by a Creighton player since the halcyon days of yore when a strapping young lad named Sir Rodney Buford laced 'em up for the Jays.

But when the Jays needed big plays down the stretch to stem a rising Husker run, Cavel Witter was the man who delivered. Breaking the press, driving the lane, and on more than one occasion rendering the half-court offense completely moot with his freestyle dribble penetration, he took over the game for some of the key moments in the second half. For that, I salute him with a tasty and refreshing 12 oz. can of generic Mountain Dew, that sweet elixer called Heee-Haw.

You bet.