UE 60, CU 56; BU 87, CU 59

“A Pretty Bad Week”

We thought we had things going pretty good (with three wins a row). But we've had a pretty bad week. ~ Dana Altman

What a difference a few days and a few hundred miles makes. When I wrote my last entry the Jays had rattled off three consecutive home wins against familiar foes Wichita State, Northern Iowa, and Southern Illinois. The Jays were all alone in third place in the Valley standings, looking up at probable league champion Drake and an Illinois State team well within the Jays’ reach with five MVC games left on the schedule.

Not anymore. Not after the “pretty bad week” Altman referenced in the quote above, offered up after his Bluejays were thoroughly dismantled in every aspect of their game against the Bradley Braves. Most of my fellow Jays fans didn’t expect to go into Carver Arena and win for a second straight year; they didn’t expect to get throttled, either. But these same fans did figure the Jays would be able to beat Evansville on the road. Nope. A close, mistake-filled loss to one of the two worst teams in the Valley, combined with a definitive drilling at the hands of an athletic-yet-defensively challenged team, is an equation that equals exactly what Altman noted: a frustrating couple of days in league play.

Roberts Stadium = The Black Hole

A few notes:

• Creighton shot a higher percentage (42%) from the field than Evansville (30%).
• Creighton outrebounded Evansville, 34-28
• Creighton blocked 7 Purple Aces shots; Evansville didn’t touch one Bluejay attempt
• Creighton scored more points in the paint than the Aces, 20-16

So, how did the Jays lose to the Aces, a team with just two conference wins coming into their home game against CU?

• 22 turnovers by the Jays
• 32 free-throw attempts by Evansville

The game wasn’t on television. I followed the action via the Internet and one of those in-game stats providers. Half the time I thought the program was broken; for all I could tell, it was stuck on “Creighton Turnover” or “Evansville Free Throw Attempt”. The Jays turned the ball over 9 more times than Evansville and committed 4 more personal fouls. The Jays got to the charity stripe 20 times; not too shabby, but they only hit 65% of their free throws. Evansville, on the other hand, made 30 of 32 free shots — 94%.

(NOTE: In their next game, a loss to Missouri State this past Saturday, Evansville only scored 38 points … just 8 points more than they scored from the free-throw line only against the Jays. Ugh.)

Flat out, the Jays came out … flat. And it isn’t something new to Altman’s Jays during their visits to Evansville. During Altman’s tenure at CU, the Jays have lost 6 road games to the Purple Aces. Two of those losses were in the 1994-95 and 1996-97 seasons, when the Aces were 18-9 and 17-14, respectively, and Altman was in the midst of trying to get his program to postseason play. The other four losses Dana’s teams have suffered in Roberts Stadium were all by teams that played in the NCAA tournament later those seasons — the 1999-2000 squad (automatic qualifiers); the 2000-01 team (the regular-season Valley champions that got an at-large bid); the 2002-2003 Jays (arguably one of the school’s best teams record-wise, these Jays won the automatic bid but lost to Evansville while ranked #10 in the nation coming into that game); and the 2004-2005 team (auto qualifiers in St. Louis).

I’m not saying the Jays are going to win Arch Madness because they lost to Evansville on the road. I’m just saying that even some of Altman’s most successful teams dropped their games at Roberts Stadium. Life on the road is tough, but something about Southern Indiana just doesn’t fit well with the Jays (campus is just 100 miles from Carbondale, so maybe that’s the reason...).

The Red Storm

The Jays lost to Bradley by 28 points, but it wasn’t even that close. Sure, after giving up the first 11 points of the game Creighton clawed back into the contest a few minutes later and trailed only by 4, but Bradley hit the gas again and never looked back.

With 3 minutes to play in the second half, the Braves held a commanding 38-point lead. THIRTY-EIGHT POINTS. Creighton allowed Bradley to play its game, complete with crisp passing, more than a dozen made three-pointers, aggressive rebounding, and superior hustle on the defensive end. Needing to respond after a lackluster effort against the Purple Aces just a few days earlier, Creighton instead failed to match (or even come close, really) to the intensity displayed by Jim Les’ team.

The Jays turned the ball over 11 fewer times against BU than they did against Evansville, yet they were absolutely destroyed on the glass (minus-13) and only made 34% of their shots from the field. Dane Watts scored 13 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, looking visibly frustrated throughout the contest, while young guns P’Allen Stinnett (18 points, 4 rebounds) and Booker Woodfox (16 points on 50% shooting) tried their hardest on the offensive end to keep the Jays somewhat close. None of it mattered in the end, though, as Bradley completed Altman’s self-professed “bad week” by sending the Jays back into the middle of the MVC pack with just 3 conference games to play.

Creighton and Bradley will square off one more time this season; the Braves will make the trek to Qwest Center for Senior Night in a couple of weeks. However, barring any unexpected 3-0 or 0-3 finishes by the Jays or Braves or Salukis or Panthers, the two teams will possibly meet in the first round of Arch Madness as the #4-#5 contest on Friday afternoon.

If that sounds familiar, it is probably because the similarities between Altman’s 2003-2004 team and this year’s squad are slowly coming into focus. That team followed one of the more successful squads in CU history; this year’s team is doing the same. That team spent a preseason trip playing exhibition games in Canada; this year’s team went North as well. That team ran wild throughout its non-conference schedule (8-0); this year’s team went 9-1. That team was destroyed in one of its final road games against the team it would eventually play (and lose to) in the #4-#5 game in St. Louis (Missouri State); hopefully this year’s squad won’t endure the same fate.

It will take a strong effort tonight against MSU for the Jays to regain the momentum that was seemingly overflowing from The Hilltop one week ago. They’ve shown the ability to string together a few good games in a row a few different times this season; hopefully Altman’s Jays can erase the “pretty bad week” starting against the Bears.