Bluejays Will Hold Heads High After Loss
By Richard Finn
Special to BIG EAST.com
NEW YORK - In the aftermath of his team’s 74-60 loss to top-seeded Villanova in the BIG EAST Men’s Basketball Tournament championship game on Saturday, Creighton coach Greg McDermott said that there would be no tears shed.
Instead he told his youthful and upstart Bluejays squad to do the exact opposite as they head home to Omaha.
“I want them to hold their heads high, to stick their chest out when someone congratulates them, I want a firm handshake and say thank you and understand that we lost to the defending national champ and the likely No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament,” said McDermott.
“But we have nothing to hang our heads about. We just weren’t quite up to the challenge today,” McDermott said of his team’s second appearance in the BIG EAST Tournament final in three years.
With a solid 25-9 record highlight by a tournament wins over No. 3 Providence followed by a final buzzer win over Xavier, the Bluejays are in good position to grab another NCAA Tournament berth when the bids are announced on Selection Sunday.
“So while they’re disappointed now, they’ve got to get over that in a hurry because they’ve accomplished a lot this week, “ said McDermott. “Selection Sunday is tomorrow. There’s 36 teams out of 350-some that will be selected as an at-large to the NCAA Tournament We’re going to be one of them.”
Villanova pretty much controlled the game from tip-off to the final buzzer, leading for 36 minutes and 6 seconds and ahead by as many as 20 in the opening minutes of the final half.
The Wildcats were able to pretty much shut down Creighton’s offense that is led by First team All-BIG EAST selection Marcus Foster and BIG EAST Freshman of the Year Justin Patton. Foster, second in the league with an 18.5 scoring average, had 13 points while Patton had 10, three under his average.
“They are a really good basketball team, we might have played our best defensive game today, “ said Villanova coach Jay Wright
McDermott declared that regardless of the result, the experience of playing before a Madison Square Garden sellout house for one of the game’s most storied titles as only a positive for his youthful squad that starts two freshmen Davion Mintz and Patton and sophomore Khyri Thomas
“It’s one thing for me to talk about what it’s like but to experience it and feel it, what the Garden is like on championship Saturday, it’s something that’s pretty incredible,” said McDermott. “ Our experience here this week is going to help us moving forward and I think help us in the NCAA Tournament.”
Bouncing back from this setback would be nothing new for this resilient team according to senior Cole Huff.
“There’s still more games to be played, and that was our mindset after every loss (in the season), after every win, there was still another day,” said Huff, who finished with 13 points.
“That’s our mindset now. And although it may be tough sometimes, especially when you have days like today when you are competing for a championship and we came up a little bit short, we still put together a hell of a weekend.
“We just have to look at all the things that we did wrong and learn from it and make sure that next weekend we can accomplish some good things in the tournament,” said Huff.