No. 12 Creighton (9-3) suffered another setback on Wednesday night, falling in 68-66 in overtime to Villanova after leading by as much as 14 in the Big East opener.
The loss put a damper on what should have been a night of celebration as Creighton officially retired Doug McDermott’s jersey pre-game.
Trey Alexander (16 points, 15 rebounds) and Baylor Scheierman (16 points, 11 rebounds) both had double-doubles, but the star guards combined to shoot 11-of-32 from the field including 0-of-9 from 3. Ryan Kalkbrenner added 14 points, eight rebounds and three blocks but only mustered four points (on 1-of-2 shooting and 2-of-3 from the line) with three turnovers after halftime.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
A Tale of Two Halves Defensively
Through 23 minutes, it looked like Creighton’s defense was going to be able to carry it through a rough offensive night. The Jays held the Wildcats to three scores on their last 16 possessions of the first half, including one bucket on their last nine.
Villanova shot 1-for-10 from 3 in the first 20 minutes and Creighton took a 10-point lead into the break. The Wildcats opened the second half with a 3, but Creighton forced them into five straight misses (with Kalkbrenner erasing a couple of layups) from there to extend the lead to 14 before the 17-minute mark.
From that point until Villanova tied the game at 58-all, the Wildcats proceeded to score on 14 of their next 21 possessions, shooting 14-of-19 (3-of-6 from 3) with two turnovers. The Jays just didn’t seem to have an answer as their lead dwindled away possession by possession.
Eric Dixon was a force all game, but Creighton locked up everybody else in the first half. In the second, nearly everybody shot 50% or better to provide their big man some back-up.
Villanova missed its final two shots in regulation, but Creighton couldn’t capitalize on the other end. Then in overtime, Dixon stepped up and hit two 3s while Creighton went 0-for, the second barely clearing the outstretched fingers of the 7-foot-1 Kalkbrenner to give the Wildcats the lead for good with just under 30 seconds to play.
Dixon finished with 32 points on 12-of-21 from the field, including 4-of-10 from 3, and 4-of-4 from the line. He was the best player on the court, scoring both inside and out, and his ability to stretch the floor and hit some tough 3s compromised Creighton’s defense, even if he was only 2-for-7 in regulation.
“He shoots the ball pretty well, so it stretches the floor a lot more,” Kalkbrenner said. “You’ve got five guys out there can shoot the ball, it just presents a different sort of challenge in ball screens. Usually we can play drop coverage, two on one going towards the basket. Since he shoots the ball well, you’ve got to play both the roll when he rolls and pop when he pops. It’s different and it’s something I’ve just got to be better at. I did a good job last year in the Big East tournament and didn’t do a good job today. I’ve got to defend better.”
Ultimately, Villanova scored under one point per possession and only totaled 68 in 45 minutes. The defense didn’t cost them the game, but the Jays also didn’t rise to the occasion when they had a chance to win it on that end.
“They got a couple on us deep,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “When Dixon had a couple it forced us to stay a little closer to him, so they were able to get a couple at the rim. I thought, for the most part, we defended the 3-point line relatively well. But they had 68 points on 75 or 76 possessions; that’s good enough defense to win. We scored six points the last 11 minutes in the second half. So I’ve got to do a better job of putting them in position to get quality shots and then we’ve got to do a better job collectively with some execution. Passing and catching, we were as careless tonight as I remembered in a long time.”
Missed Opportunities
Creighton is arguably the best 3-point shooting team in the country when factoring in shot volume, quality and accuracy, but we’ve seen a few games this season when the shots just wouldn’t go down for whatever reason. This was one of those games as the Bluejays finished 5-for-24 (20.8%).
Even so, the poor perimeter shooting isn’t what is most responsible for the loss; a few more going down only would have covered up for the other problems.
“Obviously a bit disappointing loss for a game that we controlled a good portion of,” McDermott said. “As I told our guys in locker room, I’m not I’m not disappointed in our effort. I think our effort was there. I think we failed to make some intelligent plays when we had opportunities to. We were a little looser with the ball than we usually are, and some of those steals by Villanova led to some opportunities for them. At the end of the day, they made one more play.”
Creighton, by design and based on its personnel, isn’t a team that’s going to force a lot of turnovers. Typically that’s not a problem because Creighton also doesn’t give it away a lot (top-50 in turnover percentage heading into the game).
On Wednesday, the Jays turned the ball over a season-high 16 times, including some bad ones in key moments. The Wildcats only turned those takeaways into a 13-8 edge in points off turnovers, but a five-point gap looms large in a two-point loss.
The Bluejays also missed all three of their free throws in the final five minutes, including the front end of a one-and-one. Then with a chance to tie the game at the line in the final 10 seconds, a Bluejay again missed the front end of the bonus.
In total, the last 10 minutes saw Creighton score four points on 16 possessions, shooting 2-of-11 from the field (0-of-5 from 3) and 0-of-3 from the foul line with five turnovers and zero second-chance points on their three offensive rebounds.
“I think we just had a lot of opportunities to win the game,” Alexander said. “I think that we should have controlled the game a lot better in terms of not turning the ball over, just looking for the big fella more. I just felt like our control of the game should have been a little better on the players’ hands.”
Crunch Time
For everything Creighton did on both ends of the floor to blow its lead, the Jays still had a chance at the end of regulation to win the game.
With the game tied, Scheierman got a stop and Alexander secured a contested board, leading to a Creighton timeout with 26 on the shot clock and 31.5 on the game clock. When play resumed, Alexander held the ball until the shot clock reached 8, then initiated the play, getting the ball to Scheierman on the wing then running off a flare screen from Kalkbrenner. Scheierman opted to keep the ball and attack, but by that point the clock was down to 5. He went right, bounced off the defender, went left and had to take a contested turning jumper at the buzzer.
Here’s where things got weird. For one, the officials missed that the ball was still on Scheierman’s fingertips when the buzzer went off. Mason Miller managed to knock the rebound toward the sideline then saved it back to Scheierman for the corner 3, which went down. But an official whistled the play dead, signaling the ball went out of bounds.
“We ran a little flare for Trey,” McDermott said. “Baylor read it, didn’t think he had it, so the plan was for Baylor to get downhill. He got downhill and got it up at the rim. Mason made a great effort play and unfortunately they called him for out of bounds.”
McDermott only addressed the play call and not the timing, but I personally don’t love waiting so long to begin the play with the differential what it was. I’d love to get into it sooner because it potentially leaves you with more options. Once Scheierman decided he wasn’t making the pass off the flare screen, he didn’t have time to do anything but put his head down and force up a tough shot.
Even so, Creighton got another crack at it. The officials didn’t review the missed shot clock violation (which would have given Villanova the ball with 6.5 left) but did review the out-of-bounds call, awarding the ball to Creighton and putting 3.3 on the clock.
On the in-bound play, Alexander ran off a Kalkbrenner screen and got free on the curl, but as he dribbled once and tried to jump stop into the lane he seemed to stumble and lost the ball going up, spoiling the Jays’ last chance.
Alexander looked to make up for it in overtime, scoring all eight of Creighton’s points on a pull-up, a pair of free throws and two tough layups through contact.
“I knew that I had a shot at the end of the game to win,” Alexander said. “It kind of slipped out of my hands when I was gathering it so I wasn’t able to get the shot that I wanted to. But I knew that going into OT, I felt pretty good wind-wise; I wasn’t really tired. So I knew that it was kind of something that I want to do is just be a little bit more aggressive and kind of will my team to victory.”
Nobody else could get anything going, so Creighton put the ball in Alexander’s hands again following Dixon’s go-ahead 3. He got all the way to the rim with just over 10 seconds to play but wasn’t able to finish through contact or get a foul call.
Creighton got two more chances thanks to missed front-ends from Tyler Burton, but Scheierman missed his own free throw and then a deep 3 at the buzzer.
A year ago in Omaha, Villanova needed a 3 to tie the game I the final 10 seconds and went to Dixon. He missed and Creighton won. On Wednesday, Dixon made the shot and Creighton couldn’t answer.
Basketball can be a cruel, cruel sport sometimes.
