Great win tonight. Creighton looked pretty good even without 2 players due to short-term injuries (and their center who is out for the season), and apparently they have another transfer who'll be eligible mid-season, so I think they'll make some noise in the Big East and probably make the tournament so long as they can avoid any bad losses while they're undermanned.
Simpson & Livers played well tonight, and Teske dominated late after not playing so well for much of the game.... Brooks was solid but not as involved tonight. Johns got more playing time, which was nice to play bigger and put Livers at the 3, and he did reasonably well. DeJulius also played much better, especially defensively..... Nunez remains a weakness especially on defense and didn't play as much despite not getting in foul trouble tonight (I expect he'll fall out of the rotation once Wagner is back)..... Castleton made some mistakes tonight, but I think he'll continue to progress.
Overall, the big issue tonight was rebounding, surprisingly, especially defensively, even though Michigan definitely had a size advantage. That is certainly concerning, but I think they'll get better considering how good they were in defensive rebounding under Beilein the past few years. If anything, they just need to communicate better and stay in the backcourt until the rebound is secured. They didn't really get any transition opportunities, anyway..... The other issue to a lesser extent was closing out on 3s. Creighton had too many open looks, of which they hit a decent number of them.... Otherwise, Michigan forced more and committed fewer turnovers (though they had a few dumb ones late), committed fewer and drew more fouls, and took mostly good shots, all of which are encouraging.
Now they have 2 guarantee games (Elon & Houston Baptist), neither of which appear to be dangerous to work on rebounding and any other issues before going to the Bahamas in 2 weeks....
