There was no room for pity in Tony Barone`s heart after his Creighton Blue Jays inflicted another agonizing defeat on Joey Meyer`s struggling De Paul Blue Demons Monday night.
”I only pity the sportswriters who wrote us off early this season,”
said Barone after Creighton (10-13) unleashed an incredible shooting barrage to stick De Paul with a 74-61 defeat, its fourth loss in a row.
It`s De Paul (13-10) that`s being written off now, but the Blue Demons showed a spark of life here in rallying from a 17-point deficit to make a game of it.
It was only when they got in a free-throw shooting match at the end that the Demons fell apart. Of course, for De Paul to match free throws with anyone is dangerous.
Against a team that was throwing in shots from 20 feet and beyond, it was suicidal. The Blue Jays drilled their last 9 free throws while De Paul made only 9 of 22 for the entire night.
Foul shooting was not the whole story, of course. Creighton`s shooting was. The Blue Jays missed their first two shots of the game but still shot a blistering 70 percent in the first half.
And they weren`t shooting lay-ups either. ”I didn`t see anything inside of 20 feet,” said Meyer. ”This game reminded me of when Villanova beat Georgetown (in the NCAA final). They did everything they needed to win.”
De Paul did almost everything it needed to wipe out its huge deficit. With Andy Laux hustling all over the court on defense in the most exhaustive stint in his Blue Demon career, and with Dallas Comegys (17 points) hitting key jump shots from the baseline, De Paul whittled a 50-33 lead down to 56-51 and had a chance to cut it to three points when Rod Strickland went to the line for a 1-and-1.
But the De Paul point guard, among the best of a bad lot of free-throw shooters, missed, and although Comegys twice more trimmed the lead to five points, the Blue Demons never could get closer.
Laux played 30 minutes because Tony Jackson had to sit out the game with a badly bruised foot, and Creighton`s three-guard offense was butchering De Paul.
”Our matchup problems were killing us,” said Meyer. ”Playing against all those little guys is all right if they`re missing, but the way they were shooting, we needed three quicker players to get out on the wings.”
So Laux, Strickland and Terence Greene all logged 30 minutes or more. Laux, recruited as a shooter, made only 2 of his 8 shots but made up for it with his hustle.
He made what could have been a key play when he took a charge from Creighton`s Renard Edwards and fouled him out with 6 minutes 48 seconds to play. The lead was only 56-50 at the time, but the De Paul comeback fizzled.
”We made a nice comeback,” said Meyer, ”but we shot blanks when we needed it. If they don`t shoot 70 percent for a half and we don`t miss a ton of free throws, we`re right there at the end. I thought we were going to win the game at halftime.”
The Demons were down by 15 points at the time, ”but I told our team they weren`t going to shoot 70 percent again. I figured sooner or later they`d start missing and we`d get back into the game. We changed up our defense a little and started switching so we`d have a better hand on them, but they still hit a ton.”
Creighton hit only 50 percent in the second half, but Reggie Morris and Kenny Evans kept burying the ball in the net whenever De Paul got close. Evans (23), Gary Swain (19) and Morris (20) combined for 62 of Creighton`s 74 points.
This defeat took its toll on De Paul. The clubhouse door was kept closed longer than usual afterward, and when it finally opened, the players` faces reflected the agony of their ordeal.
”We thought we`d win it,” said Laux. ”We knew at halftime they couldn`t keep shooting like that. The opportunity was there and I don`t know what it was, but we didn`t take advantage of it.”
