Creighton gets big road win
There have been a number of good basketball games to watch on television the past few weeks and some of them have been professional teams, which I find difficult to watch most of the time.
One of the best that I have seen in the last few days was not a professional game but last Wednesday’s contest between Creighton at Seton Hall.
The two teams had already met once this season in Omaha and Creighton had won that game 89-53.
This game looked as if it might be way different. Seton Hall had 54 points at half time to lead by 10 and pretty much was dominating all areas of the game.
It didn’t get much better in the second half as Creighton was down 16 at one time. But Coach McDermott made some adjustments and things started to turn around.
One was that Creighton went to a rarely used or practiced zone defense that allowed the Bluejays to overcome the big lead.
They went on a 14-2 run and picked up a difficult-to-do win on the road, with an 85-81 win over Seton Hall 85.
Looking at 81 points for the loser and you might not think Creighton played that good of defense, but you have to remember that 54 of them came in the first half.
It was a really good win for Creighton and probably will keep them in the top 25 rankings.
Huskers transferring
Another interesting thing the past week has been the loss of some more of the Nebraska football players that have entered their names into the NCAA’s transfer portal.
This has made a lot of people start wondering about what is wrong with the football program.
When Coach Frost was hired, most people thought the turnaround was just around the corner.
I read somewhere that Coach Frost had a resume from football heaven— national championship quarterback for Coach Osborne; NFL experience under Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick and mentor to Marcus Mariota and McKenzie Milton.
But the fans are starting to get a little uneasy. Now the NCAA transfer portal is getting names of Nebraska players Dedrick Mills, Wan’Dale Robinson, Luke McCaffrey, Kade Warner, and Will Farniok.
Coach Frost keeps saying he likes the culture of his team and he has a lot of confidence in the team. He has made comments to the press saying, “We are a good enough team to have won several that we lost,” That was in 2018.
“With a few plays here and there, the record would be completely different, and this year would be completely different.” November 2019.
“I don’t think our record is indicative of where we are right now and the improvements we’ve made.” November 2020.
And then in December 2020, “There has been so much progress this year. The record just isn’t what we want.” As someone stated, “Eventually the record is all that matters.”
Always two sides to story
The last item that caught my eye was news that the Grand Island Central Catholic girl’s coach had been placed on paid leave for the rest of the season.
As an old coach, I wondered what happened there. Doing some research and looking up newspaper articles, the first thing that startled me was that GICC girls are undefeated at 14-0 and ranked No. 1 in Class C-1.
And now, they will not only be without their head coach but also their top scorer on the team—the coach’s daughter, who is averaging 18.9 points per game. She also set the school’s single game record with nine 3-pointers earlier in this season.
I couldn’t find much info from the school officials but found one statement that they didn’t like the way the coach handled the team.
The coach has been at GICC for six seasons and took teams to the state tournament in 2018 and 2020.
The coach made a comment that she was dismissed by the school because of her coaching style.
I know that there are always two sides to a story and that the school isn’t going to make much information available about the situation at this time.
I hope there is a better reason than “coaching style” to get a coach dismissed during the season. Although, I suppose there could be a lot of things listed under a topic labeled “coaching style.”