BallerVolFan
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Of the teams in the Sweet 16, Creighton is dead last in bench scoring and points in the paint through the first two games.
The bench scoring makes sense. To put it into perspective, I went through the box scores to compare Creighton’s bench minutes to Tennessee’s. Since the beginning of February, Creighton’s starters have logged 80% of the minutes. In that same time frame, the Vols starters’ have logged approximately 62% of the minutes.
I dug a little further and found that since the beginning of February, Creighton has had a starter log 40+ minutes in a single game 18 times. The Vols have only had a player log 40+ minutes 2 times in the same time frame (both times was Ziegler).
They roll with their starters and they stick with them. Ashworth, Scheierman, Alexander, and Kalkbrenner have all logged 36+ minutes in the same game 8 different times since February.
Creighton does not foul much at all, only picking up around 11-12 fouls per game. If we are able to somehow force them into some foul trouble, they’ll be forced to do some things they aren’t used to doing, which is play their bench extended minutes.