Creighton men’s basketball ran away from Providence in the second half on Tuesday to hand the Friars an 84-64 loss at CHI Health Center Omaha.
The Bluejays improved to 11-6 overall and 4-2 in Big East play. Providence fell to 9-9 and 3-4.
“Really proud of the defensive job we did, especially the way Bensley Joseph and Jayden [Pierre] have been playing,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “I thought we forced them into some tough shots. I thought Jamiya [Neal] and Steven [Ashworth] and the guys that came off the bench did a good job making their life difficult. And then over 50% from the field against the team that’s been defending really well.
“So it’s a really good win for us. Providence had been playing great basketball and it’s Big East basketball, so anytime you get a win you feel good about it.”
Here are three takeaways from the victory.
Lockdown
Heading into Tuesday’s clash, Providence had scored 84, 84 and 91 points in its previous three games. Creighton’s defense wasn’t having that on Tuesday night.
The Friars shot 38.2% from the field including 4-of-20 from 3 and only attempted nine free throws, making eight.
Creighton’s defense on Providence’s backcourt was the biggest key to the victory. The Bluejays nailed 10 more 3-pointers than the Friars and shut down their top two perimeter threats, Pierre and Joseph. They combined for nine points on 3-of-19 shooting.
“We were able to keep Kalk back in the paint, so we were able to block some of their cuts,” McDermott said. “I thought Jamiya did a fantastic job not letting Jayden get started, because once he gets started, he’s hard to stop. Bensley was incredible in their last game, 7-of-9 from 3, and we maybe lost him one time where it was pretty open, but I thought the other ones were challenged. So I just thought our guards were really locked in. You have the comfort of knowing Kalk’s back there, so you can take some chances and try to keep it out of their hands, and we executed that pretty well.”
McDermott didn’t love Ryan Kalkbrenner’s play early, but the three-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year eventually settled in and added to his defensive highlight reel. Providence coach Kim English called Creighton’s center “different.”
“Obviously, there are some great defenders in our league across the board,” McDermott said. “There are a lot of great guards. But what he does for us, what he blocks is such a small part of the impact he has. Some people just don’t go in there. For every block he has, there are two shots that somebody takes that they have to throw higher to get over his hand, and they end up usually being misses, and then there’s a bunch of shots they don’t even think about taking because he’s there.
“So he impacts the game in such an incredible way. He’s so intelligent with what he does, understands when to leave his feet, when not to leave his feet, when to wall up. It’s just been so much fun to coach him. Back-to-back games, I think, with six blocks, which is pretty incredible.”
For the first time all season, Creighton forced more turnovers (12) than it committed (10), and the Bluejays won points off turnovers 13 to seven. McDermott didn’t love their defensive rebounding as the Jays allowed 13 offensive rebounds, but Providence only scored 14 points off them — not nearly enough to offset Creighton’s edge from the arc.
Oop There It Is
Early in the season, opposing teams did everything they could to keep the ball out of Kalkbrenner’s hands. Lob pass opportunities were few and far between for a guy who has feasted on them throughout his career.
That wasn’t the case in the first half against Providence as Ashworth found Kalkbrenner on lobs for buckets four times in the first half alone.
The first one was a beauty. Fedor Žugić cleared a defensive board then passed it ahead to Ashworth who took one dribble and released the ball a step past halfcourt, hitting Kalkbrenner mid-air for the dunk.
“He’s just a high-level player and a high-level thinker,” Kalkbrenner said of his point guard. “He sees the game in a really, really high-level way. He’s thinking 12 steps ahead all the time. So when you’re playing with a guy like that, you just know he’s going to see the play before it happens and he’s going to find you if you’re open. So it’s really special. It makes my life a lot easier when you play with a guy like that.”
Ashworth found Kalkbrenner twice on flip-up passes in the pick-and-roll, then also found him on a set play out of a timeout, passing from near the timeline to Kalkbrenner on the far side of the rim. He wasn’t able to flush it but still managed to tip the ball in for the bucket.
“When you’re 7-1, it’s not that hard to go up and catch the ball and dunk,” Kalkbrenner said. “Steve-o does a great job of looking for it, and when I actually run the floor well and run out of screen well, then those things sort of open up for us, because they either have to commit to taking away my lob or commit to taking away Steve-o’s layup, and Steven does a great job of reading that and flipping it up when they commit to him, or taking the layup when they stay on me.”
Kalkbrenner put forth another dominant effort, finishing with 20 points on 8-of-12 from the field (2-of-4 from 3) and 2-of-4 from the foul line, 10 rebounds, six blocks, three assists, zero fouls and zero turnovers in 33 minutes.
Ashworth found his shooting stroke again, hitting four of his 10 3-point attempts after a 2-for-21 stretch against Marquette and Butler, and finished with 20 points and six assists.
“They’ve played their whole career for this,” McDermott said. “They’re both in their fifth year. They both have a lot of game experience, and that knowledge is powerful. You’re trying to teach some of the other guys, and these guys are helping me teach it, and they’re ahead of me at some points with what they say. You heard Ryan talk about Steven; the way he sees the game is different special. He’ll come to me with some things that he sees on the floor that we adjust.
“They’re everyday guys. They don’t really change their expression that much. Their teammates know what they’re going to get out of them every single day. Most importantly, they’ve protected our culture. That lesson in itself is so valuable to the younger people in our program because it gives us a chance to hold onto it moving forward in a time where it’s very difficult to do that in college athletics.”
The pair of fifth-year seniors combined for 28 points in the first half before the bench took over and provided more support in the second half.
Bench Boost
Though Creighton led for nearly the entire game, Providence managed to hang around into the second half. Then Isaac Traudt entered the game, and everything changed.
Freshman Jackson McAndrew picked up his third foul and had to take a seat less than three minutes into the second half. Traudt replaced him with Creighton’s lead down to four and immediately made an impact. Neal threw another lob to Kalkbrenner, but the Friars collapsed on it and the 7-footer made a touch pass out to Traudt on the left wing for a wide open 3.
The he fired up three more triples in less than four minutes, making all of them and extending the lead to 13.
“On the first one, I was pretty open, he found me,” Traudt said. “And then after that, they just kept finding me. I was kind of hunting shots after I hit that first one, because it felt pretty good, and I felt like in the flow of the offense, I could get some opportunities. So the guys just found me and I knocked them down.”
Traudt got fouled on one of the 3s, hitting the free throw to finish with 13 points on 100% shooting. He also grabbed an offensive rebound that eventually led to two points via a Jasen Green post up. Creighton was plus-11 in his 21 minutes.
“Obviously when you go 4-for-4 in like four minutes of play or whatever it was, it’s a big boost to the offense and was able to stretch out the lead, because we were going back and forth with them for a little bit, and that’s sometimes a dangerous game to play,” Kalkbrenner said. “So to kind of build that lead and stretch it out a little bit was a big time for us.”
Traudt was only part of the bench mob, as Creighton outscored Providence’s bench 29 to 19. That included eight from Mason Miller, who broke out of his slump to hit a pair of 3s — both from the left corner — and convert a breakaway dunk for eight points on 3-of-4 shooting. He also grabbed four rebounds and a steal as Creighton outscored Providence by 14 in his 14 minutes on the court.
Žugić also saw his most extensive playing time as a Bluejay, logging eight minutes and scoring six points. He converted a circus shot through a foul in the first half, then knocked down two mid-range jumpers off the dribble at the end of the game. He also grabbed two rebounds and assisted Fredrick King’s lone bucket of the game.
“Good to see Mason make a couple,” McDermott said. “He’s doing a lot of other good things. He needed to see the ball go in. If we’re going to reach our ceiling, we need Mason to play at the level that he can. We need Fedor to kind of catch up. I told him with three minutes left, when he went in, ‘This is a really important stretch for you; go out there and play within our offense and hunt some shots.’ I think anytime that he has some success, it’s just going to help his confidence and get him a little bit more comfortable in what we’re doing on both ends of the floor.”
On a day when the four starters around Kalkbrenner combined to shoot 13-for-37 from the field, the bench went 11-for-13 as Creighton still shot 51.6% from the field and 43.8% from 3 for the game.
“It’s really important,” Traudt said of the bench’s contributions. “Obviously, our main guys are going to score a lot every game and do everything for us offensively, but if guys off the bench can provide a spark here and there, make a couple 3s, get some stops on defense, that’s huge and it really opens up the focus off of those guys, because then we have five threats on the floor with shooters out there.”
