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As we look at our brackets and try to pick who will advance to the Final Four, a lot of focus will be given to likely national player of the year Doug McDermott, the Creighton do-it-all-forward.
“McBuckets” is one of eight players to score more than 3,000 career points and could be the most dynamic and discussed player in the field of 68. So how do you defend such a stellar inside-outside offensive threat?
SheridanHoops was able to speak with opposing coaches and players, along with McDermott and his dad Greg, Creighton’s head coach, on how to defend McDermott and how the man himself sees the court when he’s in the zone.
McDermott was in one of those “zones” in Thursday’s Big East tournament quarterfinals.
McDermott broke the 20-year-old Big East tourney record for points in the first half of a game with 27, scoring on a dazzling array of threes, slashing layups, pull-up jumpers and free throws.
“McDermott was facilitating everything,” said DePaul head coach Oliver Purnell, whose Blue Demons were the unfortunate recipients of McDermott’s unceasing first half barrage. “”He proved once again that he is, in my opinion, the best player in the country.”
So what does being in that kind of zone feel like?
“It feels like that hoop is huge,” McDermott told SheridanHoops. “It feels like everything is going to go in, and that energy carries over to the defensive end of the floor. It’s one of those things where you feel you have all the confidence in the world.”
“Doug’s performance in the first half was one of the better ones I’ve seen,” said Creighton coach Greg McDermott, and Doug’s father. “I’ve seen some good ones out of him, but that was about as good as it gets.”
“It really wasn’t much of what DePaul was doing, I was just feeling it in the rhythm and in the zone,” Doug McDermott said. “I felt like I could make it from anywhere out there, so they were doing a good job, I just happened to get it going and my teammates recognized I had the hot hand.”
So when Doug his gets on one of his patented in-the-zone scoring binges, what does he see?
“I see a guy who wants the ball a little bit more,” Greg joked. “Usually when he’s in that zone, his teammates have done an unbelievable job over the course of his career of recognizing when Doug’s in one of those zones. They’re making the extra pass and our screening activity for him is good.”
Purnell admitted the night before the Creighton game that it was very difficult to stop McDermott, but he had a plan in mind to try to contain the Blue Jays’ star senior. It didn’t work in the first half, but he was limited to just eight points in the second half. Although the game was out of reach during the final 20 minutes, Doug McDermott didn’t seem as sharp.
“The second half, I wasn’t quite as aggressive and I took a couple of bad ones,” Doug McDermott said of his second half shot selection against DePaul. “So you just gotta not get complacent at halftime.”
Teammate Jahenns Manigat thought that McDermott’s second half misfires were part of the team’s offensive flow, but said that McDermott helps the team out as well when he feels he’s off his offensive game a little bit.
“He’s super unselfish as well,” Manigat said. “So if he feels like he doesn’t have it, he doesn’t force it.”
DePaul guard Brandon Young said was one of the many Blue Demons who was put on McDermott, to little avail. “We were trying to throw different pieces at him and make it tough for him but he’s a great player and great players do great things,” Young said.
Purnell admitted that you can’t take away every aspect of McDermott’s game, which has to be frustrating for opposing coaches and players.
“If he continues to post and we come over and double him, he picks out a guy on the other side,” Purnell said. “He’s a really good passer. And we go put a big on him and he goes out and shoots threes. So he makes it hard and then he makes a few put-backs to boot. So you do have to pick your poison.”
Sometimes you just have to hope that McDermott is having an off night, because he does so many things well.
“You want him to be inefficient and shoot a low percentage and you have a chance to get him then,” Purnell said. “When he’s shooting it really well from the outside, he’s not gonna miss many layups, he’s not gonna miss many free throws.”
Next up for Creighton in the Big East tournament was Xavier in Friday night’s semifinal. The Blue Jays and Muskateers split the regular season series and both teams are in the field of 68, so how does X head coach Chris Mack deal with a player of McDermott’s historic offensive caliber?
“We just shut him down. We don’t let him catch the ball or shoot a three,” Mack dryly deadpanned. “I mean, you just try your best. You play as hard as you can. You try to deny his catches. Try to load to the ball, try to contest his shots. And when you swallow a couple of threes, you can’t think it’s the end of the world. He scored 3,000 points for a reason.”
One point of emphasis Mack stressed is that focusing on McDermott too much could allow his teammates to shine offensively.
“We just have to play their five, not their one, and do as good of a job on the defensive end as we can.”
So how did Xavier do against McDermott? Not so well, it turned out. McBuckets shot 10-for-20 from the field and scored 32 points in an 86-78 Creighton win.
Even in the Blue Jays’ loss on Saturday to Providence in the tournament championship game, McDermott scored 27 points on 10-for-19 shooting.
“It’s very difficult to stop him,” Purnell said. “I have tremendous respect for his ability. Do you let him beat you or do force one of his teammates or a couple of his teammates to beat you?”
So as Creighton moves forward as the third seed in the west region to play Louisiana-Lafayette in San Antonio on Friday, defending and figuring out how to contain Doug McDermott is sure to be one of the most interesting topics of conversation in this 2014 NCAA tournament.
Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for Sheridan Hoops who loves advanced statistics and the way they explain what happens on the court. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. His website is SprungOnSports.com. You should follow him on Twitter.