Providence Game Thread II

[jayc13]

It would be nice to have a couple or three bench players for the regular season, but the ncaa tourney it's not as critical. A couple of our starters didn't show up ready tonight and they lost because of it. You can't take nights off (unless it's DePaul) Ashworth is a YMCA stud!

Don't get this comment, we lose by 20+ without Ashworth and likely win if he isn't on the bench with 2 fouls for a majority of the first half. Kept us in the game the last 2 even in loses

Sorry I absolutely didn't mean that as a negative. He had an amazing game tonight and has been playing great as of late. He just looks to me like he could be playing at the Y. He is becoming a tenacious assassin. I love his grit and skills. I only wish his last shot had fallen.

[bluejayfan00]

I dislike how much truth there is in both of these tweets from parody accounts

[#RollJays]

I dislike how much truth there is in both of these tweets from parody accounts

Really don’t care how many losses we have if we go to the elite 8 again.

[TrueBlueJay]

Tough being a fanatic sometimes.

[Outlaw_Wales]

Huge shout out to Jaden Green. He was really good on both ends in the very limited time he got. His reward of course was to be benched and never see the floor again, but that’s Mac and the bench.

I won’t be surprised to see him and Ditzler both go somewhere else and have massive seasons and careers elsewhere. Even when you show that you deserve to be on the floor, we keep you on the bench and then get sad that everybody has no legs and comes up short repeatedly down the stretch in games.

[JayPharmAlum]

Bummer of a loss. If Carter doesn’t throw in a 35 footer, or if we get a foul called on Ashworth at the end when he gets clubbed, Jays win and we are all happy campers.

That said, Creighton is now 4–5 against big east teams not named Depaul or Georgetown. That’s who we are.

[wildjays]

Creighton loses another close one and the defense gives up 90+ for the second straight game.

Matt and Jacob break it down on the Bluejay Beat podcast, available to our Patreon subscribers. Join today if you haven't already.. Still a lot of season left.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/bluejay-b ... =join_link

[ictjay]

Huge shout out to Jaden Green. He was really good on both ends in the very limited time he got. His reward of course was to be benched and never see the floor again, but that’s Mac and the bench.

I won’t be surprised to see him and Ditzler both go somewhere else and have massive seasons and careers elsewhere. Even when you show that you deserve to be on the floor, we keep you on the bench and then get sad that everybody has no legs and comes up short repeatedly down the stretch in games.

Agree but only on one end. His man blew by him 1st time he had the ball.

[Chicagojayfan]

Tough loss in a place that has historically been difficult for us. Refs, of course, made it worse by calling the fewest fouls on Providence (by their stats) all year in regulation (9 - 5 in the first half 4 in the second half) and the other game where they got called for that few was Leigh, in a mostly non-competitive game

Biggest Problems:

Defense - we've had 2 of our 3 worst defensive games of the year the past 2 games (119.7 rating - UNLV was the other one along with that last Butler game). I don't think the level of effort and execution is as bad as some here think, but it's a problem and we have to get stops in close games like these

Would have helped if Kalk had a better game, but Oduro was very good, but even then finished at 50% overall so it wasn't a Wilt Chamberlain type of game for him. Carter was more of a killer for us - including some amazingly tough buckets to finish in the paint, and a crazy 3 PT shot to win it

But, like Butler, the result is the same - they scored and scored a lot.. too much

Turnovers/Defensive Rebounding: Even with the D we were playing, we win this game if we block out in the first half and if we hold onto the ball in the 2nd half - 15 pts off turnovers, 12 second change pts. Can't do that and win tough road games in the BE

Offense, I disagree with some who think we had a really good offensive game - it was pretty much an average game by us offensively and in the bottom half of all of our games this year for offensive performance (114.5 rating)

Individual Play:

Ashworth is rapidly becoming one of our most important players. He had a great game last night despite missing around 10 minutes due to foul trouble (one poor call on the charge/blocking and a stupid foul to try to stop a transition bucket off of a turnover). 20 pts off of 11 shots is what gave us a shot to win this game in the second half

Baylor was also great. Trey was good, Kalk had a poor game by his standards

The 4 spot has become a problem with Miller not scoring and Traudt not getting off the bench much. Green played well in the few minutes last night, though, and I liked the experiment of playing Traudt as the backup 5. If King can't turn it around fast, we may need to see a combo of Green/Traudt as our backup center

Bello has been a solid and dependable bench guy for us, but we need to figure out a way to never get him 33 minutes in a game (even an OT game)

Looking ahead:

I've been saying for a while that this team is a work in progress and will be better by the end of the year. It still think that's true (Ashworth elevating his play makes me more confident that there is more improvement to come), but it's time for them to step up and lock in some key wins. Can they win the next 3? It's certainly possible, but they need to pull out the win vs. Xavier if they want to separate and fight to be in the top 3 of the conference

[drbluejay]

Ashworth and Baylor are both deserving of my standout player of the game but I'm giving my standout player award to GREEN
It might be time to start Green over Miller or at least take some of both Miller and Bello's minutes.