#21 Xavier 79, Creighton 66
The Heavy Hand of Reality
I’ve thought about it for almost a week, and there is no appropriate way to describe the events of last Wednesday in Omaha. By now, the entire country knows almost every detail from the murderous rampage at Omaha’s Von Maur department store. Although my thoughts and opinions about this horrific event could spill onto the space on this blog, there really isn’t any reason to do so.
The reality is, however, that this isn’t the first mall shooting in the country, just the first of its kind in our city. The people of the Denver area witnessed this reality a few days after the Omaha shootings; another young person opened fired in a senseless act of violence at a church, killing two more people before an armed parishioner acting as a security guard gunned down the gunman.
Christmas shopping and going to church. A good friend of mine, a graduate of Creighton, e-mailed Wednesday afternoon from Minneapolis to make sure everyone was OK. In signing off one of his messages, he typed, “Unbelievable.” Unfortunately, I told him, it was all-to-believable. Attribute it to whatever factors you want — issues of mental health treatment in the United States, the prevalence of the Internet as a communication medium between people of all ages and mental states, access to firearms, fractured family units, etc. — but this is the new reality. These kinds of tragedies won’t go away, and now Omaha is among the cities nationwide that will know all too well the pain and suffering experienced by the victims and the communities affected by the next kinds of these attacks.
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That the massacre fell on the day of a Creighton game only added to the bizarre aura surrounding that Wednesday. I had to leave work around 2 p.m. that afternoon and pick something up from home real quick before returning to the office. I tuned in the local sports talk radio hosts to pass the time during the mid-afternoon drive, but instead was greeted by the confused and hurried “breaking news” reports regarding the shooting. The entire drive to and from the apartment was full of false reports and assumptions from local media, who were trying to get their finger on the pulse of the situation. Needless to say, I spent the last two hours of my day in the office trying to piece together the incident myself, forgetting for the moment about Creighton’s game that night.
I had a previously scheduled meeting on Creighton’s campus that evening, about an hour before tip-off, and it was while driving to that appointment I realized there would be a very good chance the game wouldn’t be broadcast from Cincinnati. Local CBS affiliate KMTV has brought the Omaha metro area increased coverage of Creighton home and away games each of the past few seasons, and this road broadcast was arguably the crown jewel of this season’s KMTV game schedule.
A group of friends met to watch the game at The Old Mattress Factory Bar and Grill, a newly opened restaurant near the Qwest Center, and we were joined by a packed house full of Jays fans anticipating the game to show up on The Matt’s 136-inch projection screen. But as the clock inched closer and closer to 7 p.m., it was looking less likely with each passing minute that the channel would leave live coverage of the deadliest day in recent Omaha history to broadcast a basketball game.
There were conflicting reports. People throughout the restaurant were on their cell phones, claiming to have heard from someone that the game was going to be delayed slightly. Then, someone would say they weren’t showing it. About five minutes after the game was supposed to start, someone said there was a technical gaffe at the Cintas Center, where Xavier plays, and that the game was going to start late out in Cincinnati anyway.
However, there was no broadcast. Some people were upset, because by that time the only “live” coverage was of the shooter’s house and the bomb squad carefully inspecting the shooter’s car. There was no way the station was going to sign off to carry a basketball game, though, so it was out the door and into the car to listen to T. Scott’s play-by-play of Creighton’s most difficult non-conference game of the season.
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Creighton passed their first road test relatively well a few days earlier, posting a blowout payback win against Drexel in Philadelphia. However, Dana Altman’s Jays had lost 20-some straight road games against ranked opponents, and Xavier came into the Jays game in the top 20 and playing even better than that ranking. Make it another loss for Altman’s Jays on the road against a top-25 host.
The last time Creighton lost to Xavier was December 2002, when future NBA’ers Kyle Korver and David West staged an epic battle seen by almost no one. Polyfro reminisced recently about that game, which featured one of Korver’s most impressive scoring nights as a Jay.
Since then, Creighton had posted three straight wins against the Musketeers, including winning at the Cintas Center in 2004 by one point and then claming two close home wins at the Qwest Center in 2005 and 2006. All of the media pundits spent the days leading up to this season’s game commenting about how much the Musketeers wanted to beat CU this year after being on the losing end of so many difficult non-conference battles the past few seasons. They sure played like they wanted it.
(Side note: Jays fans in the Omaha area have become spoiled with Creighton’s meteoric rise in local popularity as a source of entertainment. This season, between home games fans can get tickets to and road games that are available to watch on television, all but two games are available to watch (the only exceptions are games at Evansville and at Illinois State). You’ve come a long way, Jays.)
From the opening tip until halfway through the first 20 minutes of action, the game was a frenetic example of two fast and exciting teams playing quickly and scoring seemingly at will. Creighton’s first three made field goals all came from three-point range. In fact, the Jays hit 7 of 13 three-pointers in the first half (54%). However, they were nearly outscored as a team by two of Xavier’s players, forward B.J. Raymond and guard extraordinaire Drew Lavender. Raymond missed just one shot in the first half, Lavender missed just two attempts, and both of them were a perfect 3 for 3 from long range, combining for 30 points (CU scored 32).
From the 9:04 mark in the first half, following a tying three-pointer by Nick Bahe (8 points, 2 rebounds on the evening), Creighton scored just 7 more points — lay-ups by Booker Woodfox and Dane Watts, and a three-pointer right before halftime by Watts. Xavier just absolutely poured it on the Jays, led by the speedy and seemingly unstoppable Lavender. The senior transfer from Oklahoma was slowed by no one in a CU uniform as he put up 17 points, 7 assists, and zero turnovers in 18 minutes of first-half play.
Trailing by 15 points, the Jays seemingly played their worst half of basketball all season. They could ill afford to play so poorly against a veteran Xavier team looking for another statement win (the previously defeated top-15 team Indiana this season), but the Jays shot just 43% in the first stanza and shot just one free throw the entire half. Watts picked up two early fouls, and the Jays stopped trying to force the ball inside. Altman said after the game that they fell in love with the long-range shots they were hitting through the first 10 minutes of the game, and when they stopped falling they didn’t make the proper adjustments.
Speaking of adjustments, Jays fans had to wonder what changes Altman could make with his squad during intermission. Creighton hadn’t played this poorly all year, and no one could really tell how a team full of inexperienced players would react in the second half. P’Allen Stinnett, the freshman Altman and the Jays have turned to early this season to swing momentum in their favor and score when the Jays need a lift, played only 7 minutes in the first half after picking up two fouls. He didn’t score until the second half, when he had all of his team-high 12 points (6-7 from the field).
As expected, Xavier cooled off. But after pulling within 9 points with 5 minutes to play and having the basketball following a Musketeer turnover, the Jays were unable to score on a fast break attempt and would never get closer than 9 points the rest of the way. Altman would say after the game he was disappointed by the lack of competitiveness his guys showed during the first half, and that they stepped up their tenacity in the second frame, but that they needed to play a complete game to even have a chance at beating a seasoned Xavier team on the road.
Josh Dotzler led the Jays in the loss, dishing out 5 assists to just one turnover, grabbing 6 rebounds, and adding 8 points and 2 steals in a game-high 27 minutes of play. However, seniors Watts, Bahe, and Pierce Hibma failed to get on track after the first 10 minutes of play. And save for Stinnett, the younger Jays did not play to their potential: Cavel Witter, coming off a career-high 20 points against Drexel, had as many turnovers (4) as points (4), while Booker Woodfox scored 9 points but did so on 4-13 shooting (including 1-7 from long-range), missing a couple of point-blank opportunities while taking some questionable shots in key stretches of both halves.
All things considered, however, the Jays still had a chance. They played much better defense in the second half, a trait most likely attributed to Altman’s halftime adjustments and motivations. It is a loss on the record, but by no means a “bad” loss; Xavier will turn more heads throughout this season, and barring any injuries or lapses will most likely compete for the A-10 conference title and a single-digit seed in the NCAA tournament. It was a reality check for Creighton, one they will surely build on as the season progresses.
I’ve thought about it for almost a week, and there is no appropriate way to describe the events of last Wednesday in Omaha. By now, the entire country knows almost every detail from the murderous rampage at Omaha’s Von Maur department store. Although my thoughts and opinions about this horrific event could spill onto the space on this blog, there really isn’t any reason to do so.
The reality is, however, that this isn’t the first mall shooting in the country, just the first of its kind in our city. The people of the Denver area witnessed this reality a few days after the Omaha shootings; another young person opened fired in a senseless act of violence at a church, killing two more people before an armed parishioner acting as a security guard gunned down the gunman.
Christmas shopping and going to church. A good friend of mine, a graduate of Creighton, e-mailed Wednesday afternoon from Minneapolis to make sure everyone was OK. In signing off one of his messages, he typed, “Unbelievable.” Unfortunately, I told him, it was all-to-believable. Attribute it to whatever factors you want — issues of mental health treatment in the United States, the prevalence of the Internet as a communication medium between people of all ages and mental states, access to firearms, fractured family units, etc. — but this is the new reality. These kinds of tragedies won’t go away, and now Omaha is among the cities nationwide that will know all too well the pain and suffering experienced by the victims and the communities affected by the next kinds of these attacks.
----
That the massacre fell on the day of a Creighton game only added to the bizarre aura surrounding that Wednesday. I had to leave work around 2 p.m. that afternoon and pick something up from home real quick before returning to the office. I tuned in the local sports talk radio hosts to pass the time during the mid-afternoon drive, but instead was greeted by the confused and hurried “breaking news” reports regarding the shooting. The entire drive to and from the apartment was full of false reports and assumptions from local media, who were trying to get their finger on the pulse of the situation. Needless to say, I spent the last two hours of my day in the office trying to piece together the incident myself, forgetting for the moment about Creighton’s game that night.
I had a previously scheduled meeting on Creighton’s campus that evening, about an hour before tip-off, and it was while driving to that appointment I realized there would be a very good chance the game wouldn’t be broadcast from Cincinnati. Local CBS affiliate KMTV has brought the Omaha metro area increased coverage of Creighton home and away games each of the past few seasons, and this road broadcast was arguably the crown jewel of this season’s KMTV game schedule.
A group of friends met to watch the game at The Old Mattress Factory Bar and Grill, a newly opened restaurant near the Qwest Center, and we were joined by a packed house full of Jays fans anticipating the game to show up on The Matt’s 136-inch projection screen. But as the clock inched closer and closer to 7 p.m., it was looking less likely with each passing minute that the channel would leave live coverage of the deadliest day in recent Omaha history to broadcast a basketball game.
There were conflicting reports. People throughout the restaurant were on their cell phones, claiming to have heard from someone that the game was going to be delayed slightly. Then, someone would say they weren’t showing it. About five minutes after the game was supposed to start, someone said there was a technical gaffe at the Cintas Center, where Xavier plays, and that the game was going to start late out in Cincinnati anyway.
However, there was no broadcast. Some people were upset, because by that time the only “live” coverage was of the shooter’s house and the bomb squad carefully inspecting the shooter’s car. There was no way the station was going to sign off to carry a basketball game, though, so it was out the door and into the car to listen to T. Scott’s play-by-play of Creighton’s most difficult non-conference game of the season.
----
Creighton passed their first road test relatively well a few days earlier, posting a blowout payback win against Drexel in Philadelphia. However, Dana Altman’s Jays had lost 20-some straight road games against ranked opponents, and Xavier came into the Jays game in the top 20 and playing even better than that ranking. Make it another loss for Altman’s Jays on the road against a top-25 host.
The last time Creighton lost to Xavier was December 2002, when future NBA’ers Kyle Korver and David West staged an epic battle seen by almost no one. Polyfro reminisced recently about that game, which featured one of Korver’s most impressive scoring nights as a Jay.
Since then, Creighton had posted three straight wins against the Musketeers, including winning at the Cintas Center in 2004 by one point and then claming two close home wins at the Qwest Center in 2005 and 2006. All of the media pundits spent the days leading up to this season’s game commenting about how much the Musketeers wanted to beat CU this year after being on the losing end of so many difficult non-conference battles the past few seasons. They sure played like they wanted it.
(Side note: Jays fans in the Omaha area have become spoiled with Creighton’s meteoric rise in local popularity as a source of entertainment. This season, between home games fans can get tickets to and road games that are available to watch on television, all but two games are available to watch (the only exceptions are games at Evansville and at Illinois State). You’ve come a long way, Jays.)
From the opening tip until halfway through the first 20 minutes of action, the game was a frenetic example of two fast and exciting teams playing quickly and scoring seemingly at will. Creighton’s first three made field goals all came from three-point range. In fact, the Jays hit 7 of 13 three-pointers in the first half (54%). However, they were nearly outscored as a team by two of Xavier’s players, forward B.J. Raymond and guard extraordinaire Drew Lavender. Raymond missed just one shot in the first half, Lavender missed just two attempts, and both of them were a perfect 3 for 3 from long range, combining for 30 points (CU scored 32).
From the 9:04 mark in the first half, following a tying three-pointer by Nick Bahe (8 points, 2 rebounds on the evening), Creighton scored just 7 more points — lay-ups by Booker Woodfox and Dane Watts, and a three-pointer right before halftime by Watts. Xavier just absolutely poured it on the Jays, led by the speedy and seemingly unstoppable Lavender. The senior transfer from Oklahoma was slowed by no one in a CU uniform as he put up 17 points, 7 assists, and zero turnovers in 18 minutes of first-half play.
Trailing by 15 points, the Jays seemingly played their worst half of basketball all season. They could ill afford to play so poorly against a veteran Xavier team looking for another statement win (the previously defeated top-15 team Indiana this season), but the Jays shot just 43% in the first stanza and shot just one free throw the entire half. Watts picked up two early fouls, and the Jays stopped trying to force the ball inside. Altman said after the game that they fell in love with the long-range shots they were hitting through the first 10 minutes of the game, and when they stopped falling they didn’t make the proper adjustments.
Speaking of adjustments, Jays fans had to wonder what changes Altman could make with his squad during intermission. Creighton hadn’t played this poorly all year, and no one could really tell how a team full of inexperienced players would react in the second half. P’Allen Stinnett, the freshman Altman and the Jays have turned to early this season to swing momentum in their favor and score when the Jays need a lift, played only 7 minutes in the first half after picking up two fouls. He didn’t score until the second half, when he had all of his team-high 12 points (6-7 from the field).
As expected, Xavier cooled off. But after pulling within 9 points with 5 minutes to play and having the basketball following a Musketeer turnover, the Jays were unable to score on a fast break attempt and would never get closer than 9 points the rest of the way. Altman would say after the game he was disappointed by the lack of competitiveness his guys showed during the first half, and that they stepped up their tenacity in the second frame, but that they needed to play a complete game to even have a chance at beating a seasoned Xavier team on the road.
Josh Dotzler led the Jays in the loss, dishing out 5 assists to just one turnover, grabbing 6 rebounds, and adding 8 points and 2 steals in a game-high 27 minutes of play. However, seniors Watts, Bahe, and Pierce Hibma failed to get on track after the first 10 minutes of play. And save for Stinnett, the younger Jays did not play to their potential: Cavel Witter, coming off a career-high 20 points against Drexel, had as many turnovers (4) as points (4), while Booker Woodfox scored 9 points but did so on 4-13 shooting (including 1-7 from long-range), missing a couple of point-blank opportunities while taking some questionable shots in key stretches of both halves.
All things considered, however, the Jays still had a chance. They played much better defense in the second half, a trait most likely attributed to Altman’s halftime adjustments and motivations. It is a loss on the record, but by no means a “bad” loss; Xavier will turn more heads throughout this season, and barring any injuries or lapses will most likely compete for the A-10 conference title and a single-digit seed in the NCAA tournament. It was a reality check for Creighton, one they will surely build on as the season progresses.
posted by Creighton Otter at 12:59 PM
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