Villanova Game Thread

[bluejayfan00]

At some point, we are what we are. We've lost three games. None of the teams we've lost to are particularly powerhouses. CSU is good, but I don't think they're any better than middle of the road BE teams. UNLV stinks. Nova isn't Nova of old. They were without arguably their best player, and they've lost to Drexel, St. Joes, and Penn.

We've lost two games that we were 9 point or greater favorites. The computers somehow still think we're a top 20 team, and I don't really get it.

We are way too one dimensional. Way too limited. That's not changing this year, and next year looks like it'll be rough unless they're some massive portal additions.

[HaRdWoOd]

As I said last night we gave this one away in about every aspect of the game. Defense fell apart. Dixon's a tough matchup, but we got shredded in the second half after playing them tough in the first half. Offense fell apart as well.

I think coaches got too conservative in playing not to lose and not forcing Nova to play us. I give a lot of credit to Mac all of the time, but last night was not a good performance by the staff, IMO

3x this year Baylor and Trey have been awful from the floor and 3X we've lost. Paint was open to Kalk, but we didn't go there enough, and run more damned plays for Miller and Traudt

And the crowd sucked as well

Anyway, second worst Offensive game of the season for us - Only Colorado State was worse. 39.7% from the field, 20.8% from 3 PT range, 16 turnovers (what the heck?),

Defensively, this was the worst offensive game for Nova all season, so on paper it looks kinda OK, but given how we got shredded in the second half, we all know it wasn't a great defensive game

I thought the defense was okay. Gave up 58 points in regulation. Nova only shot 40% from the field and 32% from three. That should be good enough to get a win. They kept attacking the guards in the post but I thought our guards held up pretty well down there.
One of the common themes in the three losses is the inability to do ANYTHING in the second half. No threat to rally back against Colorado St and UNLV. The halftime deficits actually got larger. Last night, blow the big lead in the second half. Think minutes are a problem for the big three. Are we just not going to sub them out all year? Ed Cooley is impressed by the amount of minutes played by these guys. Shooting percentages are down across the board. Every miss by Baylor is off the front of the rim. Tired legs are a real thing. Especially for a team that relies on jump shooting. This team is going to wear down. Bank on it.

[NUgradCUfan]

Burn the grey unis. Just get rid of them. They are ugly and drab and it seems like the Jays play ugly and drab basketball and it leads to an ugly and drab and sleepy home court crowd. It started with BE Championship game against G'Town a few years back if memory serves, and I know there have been quite a few terrible performances since. Last night was a terrible performance. 10 point home favorite and blew a 14 point lead. Just effing burn those unis.

We were in the baby blues when we got throttled by Georgetown, but I agree they need to get rid of the grays regardless.

And the player intro / songs during breaks is a complete mess. How incompetent has that division been for however many years now? It's a joke.

[Jaybird]

Burn the grey unis. Just get rid of them. They are ugly and drab and it seems like the Jays play ugly and drab basketball and it leads to an ugly and drab and sleepy home court crowd. It started with BE Championship game against G'Town a few years back if memory serves, and I know there have been quite a few terrible performances since. Last night was a terrible performance. 10 point home favorite and blew a 14 point lead. Just effing burn those unis.

We were in the baby blues when we got throttled by Georgetown, but I agree they need to get rid of the grays regardless.

And the player intro / songs during breaks is a complete mess. How incompetent has that division been for however many years now? It's a joke.

Instead of important stuff, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about our intro song since it got its own thread a few weeks ago, and I've just been waiting for somebody to bring it up again. Well, I think I've got it. I've got the solution. Maybe a perfect, end of discussion, solution. Birdland.

Pull up the instrumental on Youtube or whatever fills your music needs, and give it a listen. Then tell me your day didn't immediately get a little better. It's jazzy, it's upbeat, it's energetic. It'll put a bounce in your step. Flowers will smell better. The sun will shine brighter (unless it's night time, of course). By now, it's probably unique for an intro song. But what's old can be new again. It can be our signature. Something you hear and you think right away, Jays hoops. And then there's the title. I mean, come on.

And I'm not the only one who considered Birdland the perfect intro song. Creighton did too at one time because it WAS our intro song, until still another gameday crew rolled into town and, because Birdland wasn't written and released like six minutes ago, they trashed it. Kicked it to the curb. I say, bring it back.

And here's what else we should bring back. Billy rampaging through downtown Omaha right up there on the video board until he ends up stomping and crushing whatever that night's opponents' mascot happens to be (maybe a little problematic in the case of Providence). Birdland and a Billy stomp? A crowd-pleasing, energy-producing one-two punch that'll have everybody up and out of their seats.

But now that I've fixed our pre-game malaise, I've run out of ideas. As for everything that happened after the pre-game last night, I've got as many answers as we have reliable point guards. I do have an answer ready though if anybody asks me (nobody will) what I think our chances are of making the Final Four or even getting back to the Elite Eight. It's the same as Jasen Green's uniform number. Sure, I would have said the same thing a year ago, and look what happened. Except, this year feels different. We just don't have the horses to go very far and we can't fix it now. But we can at least fix that damn song..

[WyoJays]

Burn the grey unis. Just get rid of them. They are ugly and drab and it seems like the Jays play ugly and drab basketball and it leads to an ugly and drab and sleepy home court crowd. It started with BE Championship game against G'Town a few years back if memory serves, and I know there have been quite a few terrible performances since. Last night was a terrible performance. 10 point home favorite and blew a 14 point lead. Just effing burn those unis.

We were in the baby blues when we got throttled by Georgetown, but I agree they need to get rid of the grays regardless.

And the player intro / songs during breaks is a complete mess. How incompetent has that division been for however many years now? It's a joke.

I'll ask you the same thing I asked the other guy.. Outside of getting rid of the blue crew, what more are the day-of-game staff supposed to do? We've been talking about the sleepy crowd for a few seasons now. There have been at least 4-5 different people on the athletic staff in charge of that over the last several seasons.

It wasn't you, but the post calling out the guy from Wichita State's ability to do their job, after the staff has turned over every year, for several years is wild. It's hard to have any consistency or even trial-and-error when Creighton continues to cycle through the people who are responsible for providing in-game entertainment.

In my short time on this board, it feels like whenever the team plays poor, we find a way to talk about the arena atmosphere.

[minakirogue]

The day-of-game atmosphere is something that is going to have to be changed naturally and over time. It is culture. The staff has tried just about all they can in my opinion. At some point, whose fault is it that we have a fan culture where after the first two minutes of the game the entire lower bowl outside of the student section sits down? Is the staff supposed to turn the experience into an NBA game and constantly play music to engage the fans? There is very little natural fan interaction with the game outside of a big three or a dunk. Almost everything comes from a prompt from the arena, IMO. Even after a big play fans return to their seats pretty quickly when the game returns to normal.

The atmosphere wasn't very good last night and neither were the Jays. Could a better atmosphere helped the team? Maybe. But regardless, I think it is fair to critique the overall atmosphere without calling out specific Creighton staffers. We love to tout the attendance numbers, but it doesn't appear to me that pure attendance produces any sort of home field advantage for Creighton. To me, that's down to atmosphere and actual behavior of the 17k. We can get up for big games. That was a big game last night and lose at home in OT is pretty tough to swallow.

[skinzfan23]

I completely agree that the crowd sucks last night and I also expected more from the jersey retirement ceremony (but that is how the McDermotts are, nothing flashy, but definitely very classy)

It is hard for the crowd to get into it when the players do nothing to excite the crowd. I know it works both ways, but I kept wanting to get loud (as I usually do at games) but there just wasn't much to cheer about. I don't think we played good D as much as Nova just missed a ton of shots in the 1st half. I kept telling the people around me, if they start hitting we will lose with our effort. After starting 0-9 they finished 7-13 for the rest of the game. Meanwhile, we started 4-12 from 3 and finished 1-12 for the last part. Absolutely pathetic.

The only thing more pathetic is the crowd for Iowa's home game vs UMBC at a 7pm start time ( I know the opponent wasn't good, but that is sad). 8,357 announced but probably more like 4-5,000 in attendance max, and that is being generous)

We should at least be proud that our fans showed up. Almost every fan base in America would love to have the fan support at games that we do. Hopefully we and the Jays can bring it for the next home vs Providence on Jan 6.



Our crowd during warmups last night:

[section221jay]

Were the students there or are they on break?

The "crowd sucks" theme has been a constant at the new arena from the beginning. Weekend night games not so much. Weekday games? It's always going to be the case to some degree. It is what it is. The crowd has always fed off the team/action. When the team/action is dead the crowd is going to be dead. If there were 3000 students down by the floor that would change things but that's obviously never going to be the case.

[minakirogue]

Were the students there or are they on break?

The "crowd sucks" theme has been a constant at the new arena from the beginning. Weekend night games not so much. Weekday games? It's always going to be the case to some degree. It is what it is. The crowd has always fed off the team/action. When the team/action is dead the crowd is going to be dead. If there were 3000 students down by the floor that would change things but that's obviously never going to be the case.

They were mostly on break. They shrunk the student section and opened up more rows behind as for-sale tickets.

[Altmanforprez]

I don't even want to talk about the game, I can't bring myself to relive the game through the thread. I'm sure there's been callouts on the crowd, it was certainly a strange one. There were times it got loud, but for the most part it was very lackadaisical, which brings me to the winter break student section.

For years Creighton has used winter break as a way to get high schoolers in the metro tickets to games, but it really drags down the atmosphere. I understand it's somewhat of a recruitment tool, but let's be honest, how many high schoolers end up at Creighton because of a winter break basketball game? Very, very few. Also it's one thing when that game was against Evansville, but now that we're in the Big East high schoolers aren't going to cut it.

If we're trying to creative and create a better game experience there's almost certainly a way. One being an "upgrade" package, offer tickets to upper bowl fans at a discounted rate to move down into that section during the break games, Creighton could offer the tickets of those who take the upgrade to local high schools or resell them and make a little extra dough.

Another option would be giving alumni an opportunity for the tickets through a lottery system. That's a group who sat in those seats, and while older (maybe wiser? maybe not) they at least understand the importance of the game.

They also could leverage the super secret points that each season ticket holder has and upgrade based on points and resell the tickets that are vacated.

My point being, this having high schoolers who may or may not give a shit about the game is not the answer. That was an embarrassing performance on and off the court.