Creighton 71, Southern 60

Ice Cold

Five degrees.

That’s a small number. That was the high temperature on Monday, coming at 3:19 p.m. If at that point in the afternoon you got in touch with most Jays fans yesterday and asked them for their pregame thoughts about the CU-Southern matchup, I’m not sure any single person would have predicted a scenario in which Creighton and the visitors from Baton Rouge were within 6 points of each other in the second half. But while the climate was cold, the Jays were almost colder, and CU needed a late spurt to put away the Jaguars.

It was the Southern squad starting the game with the chilly play. They scored 1 point in the first 4:34 of the game, as the Jays opened up a 12-1 lead. But over the course of the evening, the Jaguars shot 45% from the field. That’s a markedly better percentage than the 38% they averaged for the season coming into Creighton’s second game of the Las Vegas Invitational.

Nope, the team shooting 38% for the evening was the home squad, the boys in the White and the Blue. Except for Booker Woodfox, the Jays were frigid from the 3-point line too (25% on 7-28 shooting). On a night when fans stayed home because of a potential blowout and very real weather issues, the Qwest Center felt a bit drafty. That chill in the air seemed to settle on Creighton’s home court, and the Jays needed some energetic defense and some sparks from Woodfox’s shooting touch to turn up the heat and improve to 8-2 on the year.

• The Jays forced 29 Southern turnovers. Twenty. Nine. One of the Jaguars starters, Steffon Wiley, had 9 turnovers in 20 minutes of action. Creighton had 9 turnovers total all night. Chris Davis, who led Southern with 16 points, also had 8 turnovers. Obviously, not all of those were directly caused by outstanding defense by the Jays, but they pressured the basketball enough to force SU to cough up the pill. This isn’t a fluke; for the season, CU is forcing 20.1 opponent turnovers each game, an average that ranks the Jays’ opponents 335th in the nation.
  
  
  
• One key to causing this miscues is the grand larceny practiced by Josh Dotzler and P’Allen Stinnett. Creighton stole the ball from Southern 17 times. That’s almost a steal every two minutes. Stinnett set a career high with 7 swipes by himself, saying of his performance “it felt pretty good.” It should have, considering P’s previous high for steals this season (3) came against Arkansas-Pine Bluff in the second game of the season.
  
  
  Dotzler recorded 4 thefts himself, adding to his resume as one of the sneakiest defenders in the country. With 31 steals so far this season, he ranks 4th in the nation in total takeaways. His 3.1 steals per game average places his 9th in the country in that statistic. He is the lead burglar for a team that ranks 4th in the nation in total steals (105 total) and 10th in steals per game (10.5).
  
  
  
• Dana Altman always preaches to his players the importance of putting effort into the areas that they can control; namely, defense and rebounding. Some nights the shots won’t fall (similar to last night against Southern), but those are the games you can win with fiery defense. The Jays turned those 29 turnovers into 34 points.
  
  The rebounding left more to be desired, but that seems to be par for the course so far this season. Kenton Walker will be on the bench for the foreseeable future with a wrist injury, a fate destined to leave the Jays shorthanded in the post. This had an immediate impact on rebounding, as CU’s two postmen – Kenny Lawson (5 rebounds in 10 minutes of foul-riddled play) and Chad Millard (4 rebounds in 30 minutes of action) – failed to establish themselves on the boards.
  

With a trip to (not so) sunny Las Vegas lined up following finals this week, the Jays will spend their next two games basking in a much warmer climate. Hopefully their shooting and rebounding will heat up back to the level they were playing at before the cold front moved into town on Monday. They’ll need it against Fresno State on Monday and either DePaul or St. Louis University on Tuesday, while the rest of us are stuck shivering in the Midwest.