Creighton men’s basketball gave itself a chance on the road against a top-10 team Friday night, but the Bluejays came up a few plays short in a 79-71 loss at No. 8 Marquette.
“It was a really good college basketball game,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “I told the team I’m proud of the way that we responded. We really lost the game the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes and second, some mistakes and breakdowns. We were up, 32-25 or whatever it was, and then we lost a ton of momentum, mostly our own doing.
“Obviously, when you make mistakes against a good team, you pay for it. Marquette has got a heck of a team.”
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
Missed Opportunity, but a Step Forward
March is a long way off and the Jays tend to improve throughout the season under McDermott, but Creighton can’t dig itself too deep of a hole early when it comes to putting together an NCAA Tournament résumé. That’s why the loss really hurts.
After Friday night, Creighton’s NET team sheet shows a 1-4 record in quadrant one games with the lone win coming against Kansas when the Jays still had Pop Isaacs. Currently, they project to play six more quad one games in Big East play — at home against Marquette, home and away against UConn and away at St. John’s, Xavier and Villanova. Creighton is currently 0-3 on the road and simply holding serve at home — in itself a tough task with the Huskies and Golden Eagles on the schedule — likely won’t be enough to get Creighton into the tournament.
Creighton battled well enough to give itself a chance at securing a road win to put at the top of its résumé alongside the Kansas game, but they Jays couldn’t find a way to finish it off, shrinking their margin for error even more moving forward.
Even so, the difference between their first road loss — at Georgetown — and their second was night and day.
The Hoyas ratcheted up the physicality and ball pressure in Washington D.C. a couple weeks back, and the Bluejays folded. Creighton committed 16 turnovers — including 12 of the live-ball variety — that Georgetown converted into 20 points on the other end, and the Hoys turned a six-point game at halftime into a blowout. Creighton had a miserable time trying to generate quality offense outside of 3-point attempts for Steven Ashworth, Jackson McAndrew and even Ryan Kalkbrenner.
On Friday, after playing well enough to string together a 10-point run and hold Marquette scoreless for more than five minutes in the first half, Creighton surrendered a 26-3 run between the end of the first half and the start of the second to build a 15-point lead.
With Chase Ross, Stevie Mitchell and others hounding Creighton’s playmakers on and off the ball, the Bluejays were on their heels, fighting for their lives on nearly every possession. The game very easily could have gone off the rails at that point.
But it didn’t. The Jays battled back to make it a three-point game with just over 11 minutes to play, a four-point game with seven minutes to play and a five-point game with just over two minutes to play — against a much better team than Georgetown (with all due respect to the Hoyas, who improved to 3-0 in Big East play Friday night).
“There’s a lot to it, but proud of the way that the guys responded, especially from the fact that basketball is a long season, and I’m glad that we were able to learn from our road loss at Georgetown, because we’re in a similar situation, down big and we didn’t respond,” Ashworth said during an interview on 1620 the Zone. “Tonight, we responded with grit and toughness, and I think those two words kind of define what we needed more of, and we were able to display it in stretches.”
Creighton didn’t finish the job, and whatever progress the Jays made from game one on the road to game two in conference play won’t matter unless that progress continues. After a seven-day layoff, they’ll get another chance at a road win on Jan. 11 as they visit Butler (a quad two game).
“Proud of our team,” McDermott reiterated. “We lost to a really good basketball team, and I think we I think we got better. I think we grew a little bit tonight as a group, and hopefully we can use this as we get ready for Butler here in a week or so.”
In Search of a Complete Performance
So many times this season, Ashworth and Kalkbrenner have put the team on their back while the guys around them struggled to find their stride and make a positive impact on the game. On Friday, it was the opposite.
Jamiya Neal was arguably Creighton’s best player, finishing with 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting (2-of-4 from 3) and 3-of-4 free-throw shooting, four rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocks. Creighton used a 12-0 run in the second half to get back into the game, and Neal had eight of those points on two 3s and a put-back dunk. He also played a big part in holding Marquette star Kam Jones to 8-of-22 from the field.
Freshman Jackson McAndrew finished with 10 points and six rebounds, providing a big offensive spark in the first half. Isaac Traudt chipped in a 3 and a layup off the bench. Mason Miller scored his first 2-pointer of the season and grabbed five rebounds. Fred King converted a couple of buckets at the rim and Fedor Žugic scored his first points as a Bluejay thanks to a friendly roll on a 3-point attempt.
Bench points were a wash — 15 apiece. Creighton’s supporting cast did enough to get a win against a great team. Unfortunately, the team’s stars — Kalkbrenner and Ashworth — just didn’t have it offensively. They both recorded double-doubles, combining for 29 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists, but they shot a combined 8-of-29 from the field.
On a night when he joined the 2,000-point club (one that only had three members at Creighton before Friday), Kalkbrenner shot 4-of-11 from the field with almost all those attempts coming at the rim. One of the most efficient players in college basketball history couldn’t get a bunny to fall.
Ashworth entered Friday shooting an even 40% from 3 on a Big East-leading 8.5 attempts per game. Against the Golden Eagles, he finished 1-for-13 from the arc.
After Creighton cut Marquette’s lead to 72-67 with just over two minutes to play, Ashworth had the ball in his hands and came free off a screen for one of the cleanest looks from 3 he got all night. Short. After a stop, the Jays went inside to Kalkbrenner on the block, and the 7-footer also couldn’t convert.
Creighton got the looks it wanted for its two best players with a chance to put some real pressure on the Golden Eagles, and they went 0-for-2. Ashworth put it best.
“We had great opportunities, great looks that normally fall for us that just didn’t tonight,” Ashworth said. “That’s basketball sometimes.”
Creighton has shown throughout this season it has the pieces to compete with pretty much anyone, but it’s going to take a complete and complementary performance to pull off the win. The Jays didn’t get that on Friday night in Milwaukee.
Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Game
Ball security has been one of Creighton’s most glaring flaws this season. The Bluejays have turned it over on nearly a fifth of their possessions this season, while Marquette is 10th in the country in forcing turnovers.
The only team that forces turnovers at a higher rate in the Big East is St. John’s, and the Jays gave the ball away 19 times at home against the Red Storm on Tuesday, nearly giving away the game as well. A repeat performance likely would have resulted in a blowout.
There’s no doubt that turnovers factored heavily into Marquette’s big run as the Golden Eagles’ pressure rattled the Jays to a certain extent. However, the final tally was just 12, more than McDermott would like but within an acceptable range. Furthermore, Creighton only turned it over twice in the last 15 minutes, which played a big part in the Jays’ comeback.
“With a team that’s averaging that many live-ball turnovers in a game, you know it’s going to be emphasized to make sure that we take care of the ball,” Ashworth said. “It’s a learning lesson for us that we can do it against one of the premier teams in the country at turning teams over, we can take care of the ball … A lot of it was a focusing and preparation and practice. We did a lot of things that were unique to try to prepare for their defensive intensity and their ability to deflect passes and run passing lanes. For the most part we did a pretty good job.”
Even though his shot wasn’t falling, Ashworth dished out 10 assists with just one turnover, despite spending the entire game under heavy duress. Neal added his four assists while turning it over twice.
However, the 12 Creighton turnovers led to 21 Golden Eagle points. Creighton only forced seven turnovers and scored 10 points off them. On a night when the Jays lost the 3-point battle by 12 (7-for-31 for Creighton, 11-for-34 for Marquette), that five-possession advantage proved to be too much for Creighton to overcome.
