Creighton men’s basketball took down Butler 80-76 at Hinkle Fieldhouse on Saturday to improve to 10-6 on the season and 3-2 in Big East play.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Bounce-Back Bluejays
Both Steven Ashworth and Ryan Kalkbrenner struggled to do what they do best in Creighton’s 79-71 loss at Marquette last Friday, combining to shoot 8-for-29 from the field in a game that was close into the final minutes.
The two fifth-year seniors weren’t going to be the reason Creighton came up short for a second straight game — even though they were both throwing up before the game with the flu, according to Coach Greg McDermott.
Kalkbrenner dominated the second half to finish with 26 points on 11-of-17 from the field and 3-of-5 from 3 while only attempting two free throws despite plenty of physicality around the basket. In addition to the three triples (tying the second most in a game during his career, set in last year’s game at Butler), he routinely out-ran Butler’s bigs in transition for easy buckets and went to work in the post in the second half.
The 7-footer added nine rebounds, six blocks and three steals to his line. In the second half alone, he totaled 14 points on 6-of-8 shooting, seven rebounds, five blocks and a steal while playing the full 20 minutes.
“Six block shots in a game where [Boden] Kapke plays 20 minutes and pulls him away from the basket,” McDermott said on his post-game radio interview. “He got them at critical times. He executed a few switches down low and some switches on ball screens, and those shots all of a sudden become really difficult for the opponent when they have to meet him at the rim.”
Ashworth dominated the game in his own way, falling one assist shy of a triple-double with 22 points, a career-high 12 rebounds and nine assists while playing the full 40 minutes. He struggled with his shot for the second straight game, finishing 1-of-8 from 3, but made up for it by going to work from the mid-range and in, finishing 7-of-12 inside the arc. The lone 3-pointer came in a big moment late after Butler had cut a 12-point Creighton lead down to six with less than four to play.
“Unbelievable, especially when you consider he’s 1-of-13 at Marquette, misses his first seven, so he’s one of his last 20, and he hits the back breaker at a critical time,” McDermott said. “He does so much for us, and like I said, he was sick before the game. He wasn’t in the huddle while they were doing their lineups, because he was over the garbage can. But he’s one tough dude and does a great job leading us. He had his fingerprints all over this game today.”
Mixed Bag Defensively
Creighton’s defense has been all over the map so far this season. At times, the Bluejays have locked their opponents up, and at others they’ve struggled to get stops while committing too many mental mistakes. Saturday was a bit of both in that regard.
After building a 16-10 lead in the first half thanks in part to forcing Butler into six straight misses from the field, Creighton’s defense fell apart. The Bulldogs went through a stretch where they scored on eight of their 10 possessions to take a lead, and the only reason the Jays didn’t find themselves trailing at the break was a hot finish to the half on their part as well. It was 43-all at halftime as Butler shot nearly 58% from the field.
“A lot of it came down to just a little more physicality off the ball,” Ashworth said. “They were making cuts, Kalk’s man was setting pin downs, and it was just really hard to get them out of the rhythm, because we were chasing all of those and we weren’t physical enough at the point of the screens. And so it’s a little more physicality. I felt like we were able to be in front of them as opposed to behind them on those mid-range jumpers and able to force a few more misses on the defensive end in the second half.”
The added physicality paid off in a big way as Butler missed 14 of its first 19 shots in the second half, allowing Creighton to build a 12-point lead. Four of those misses were Kalkbrenner blocks as the three-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year asserted himself after a much less impactful first half defensively.
“The first seven to 10 minutes of the game, I thought we defended great, and I thought we defended the first 12 to 15 minutes of the second half,” McDermott said. “We talked about it at halftime, there wasn’t enough teeth to what we were doing. We blew some assignments, miscommunicated a few switches, and they made us pay when it happened.”
Butler got hot again late, going 4-for-5 from 3 in a five-minute span to trim the 12-point deficit down to three, but Creighton got the stop it needed at the end as Kalkbrenner blocked a Pierre Brooks layup then forced a Patrick McCaffery miss on a corner 3 with a strong contest.
McCaffery got loose for 21 points and Brooks scored just shy of his average with 14 points while Finley Bizjack and Kapke combined for 24 points on 9-of-15 shooting off the bench. However, a key to the victory was the defensive effort on Butler’s leading scorer, Jahmyl Telfort. He finished with nine points on 4-of-11 shooting after lighting Creighton up for 26 points in Omaha a year ago.
“I thought Jasen [Green] did a great job of him to start the game,” McDermott said. “Mason [Miller] spent a little time on him, Isaac [Traudt] was on him down the stretch. I thought those guys did a really good job of making his shots difficult, and then we got him in some switches with Kalk where he tried to beat the bear at the rim a little bit and it’s hard to do that. Fortunately, we did a good job on him, because if you told me Bizjack and Kapke were going to get 24 between them, I thought we’d have been in trouble.”
First Road Dub
The loss was Butler’s ninth in a row, though that includes a four-point home loss to UConn that showed how dangerous the Bulldogs can be in Hinkle Fieldhouse.
It was the first road win of the season for the Bluejays, who lost in a blowout at Georgetown and let one slip away at Marquette to open conference road play.
“Hard to win on the road in this league,” McDermott said. “Butler’s had incredibly competitive games here against really good teams. It’s just a matter of time before they turn it around, so we’re really fortunate to come in here and get a victory … You take it and you put a big smile on your face and you fly back to Omaha.”
To get it done, Creighton needed its seniors to step up in big moments. For Ashworth, that was the transition 3 after a 0-for-7 start to the game.
“That was a blessing from heaven, it felt like, honestly,” Ashworth said. “We needed that one to go down. All of them felt really good, my feet felt good, and I’ll just have to go watch the film on why I couldn’t get them to go down. But shooters keep shooting, and that’s what we’re going to do, and that’s what I did, and got one to finally drop when we needed it.”
The nation’s best free-throw shooter also hit one from the stripe with 16 seconds left to push Creighton’s lead to four, making the final seconds a bit less stressful (though he missed the second, ending his streak at 38 consecutive makes). He’s now 61-of-63 (96.8%) on the season.
Kalkbrenner dominated on both ends of the floor all second half and stepped up with the two key plays defensively at the end.
Jamiya Neal also took over for a stretch in the second half with four straight Creighton buckets including a personal 6-0 run to push the lead to eight. McDermott liked his matchup and called his number out of a timeout, and the senior delivered. He finished with 14 points with a strong second half despite shooting 2-of-7 from the field in the first half.
Creighton has now won three straight at Hinkle Fieldhouse for the first time ever.
“It’s hard to believe,” McDermott said. “We’ve had a hard time winning here. Obviously, the fans are great, they understand the game. It wasn’t perfect, and we have to get closer to perfect, but it’s a great victory on the road in this league.”
