No. 21 Creighton men’s basketball finished in seventh place at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas with an 80-76 win over Notre Dame on Saturday.
A 1-2 record likely wasn’t what Coach Greg McDermott had in mind when Creighton made the move to join this tournament, but considering the circumstances, heading home off a win was big for the team, especially with what lies ahead.
“We definitely didn’t want to leave Vegas without a win, and we just wanted to stick with it, not get down on ourselves, not feel bad for ourselves,” Jamiya Neal said. “Everybody goes through adversity and we knew that we had to stick together and try to get one.”
Here are three takeaways from what we saw from the Jays in Vegas.
Dealing with Adversity
Creighton’s loss to Nebraska before departing for Las Vegas added injury to insult when senior point guard Steven Ashworth went down with a serious ankle sprain that McDermott initially thought would sideline him for a while.
Ashworth did not play in the opening game against San Diego State, and it went poorly. The Jays managed to hang around in the first half with Pop Isaacs and Jackson McAndrew combining for 19 points, but the second half went off the rails as the Aztecs pulled away for a 71-53 win. San Diego State went on to beat No. 6 Houston to finish in third place.
In a major surprise, Ashworth was back in the lineup for the 77-73 loss to No. 20 Texas A&M, scoring 14 points and shooting 4-of-9 from 3 in 31 minutes while helping limit the Aggie starting backcourt to a combined 30 points on 44 shooting possessions. He played 36 minutes in the win over Notre Dame, despite the ankle still visibly bothering him at times. He added 15 points and six assists while holding his own defensively again.
For Ashworth to only miss one game is a massive win, and his absence showed how valuable he is to this team.
Ashworth’s situation wasn’t the only bit of adversity the team had to deal with. Ryan Kalkbrenner, the team’s other veteran leader, was a surprise scratch against Notre Dame on Saturday with a “lower body injury.” McDermott said afterward holding him out was mostly precautionary, but beating another high-major team without its best player had to be a big confidence boost for the squad.
Fredrick King played a big part on the win, starting in Kalkbrenner’s place and totaling 14 points on 6-of-10 from the field and 2-of-3 from the foul line, five rebounds and four blocks before fouling out in 26 minutes. The Jays went inside to him on the first possession, and he earned a trip to the foul line.
“It charges me up like a battery,” King said. “After that, I just knew I was going to have a good night because it gave me confidence. I missed the first one, but I was ready.”
He added a put-back, another bunny and an alley-oop to score seven of Creighton’s first 12 points. In total, he put up 23 points on 10-of-17 shooting in Vegas after accounting for 17 points in his first five games combined.
Isaacs also played through an illness that put him on the bench for much of the second half against Notre Dame. He checked out just before the 11-minute mark, running off the court and back into the tunnel before later returning to the bench. He didn’t return to the game until the 1:38 mark, but once he did, he immediately made a big play, converting a tough floater through an uncalled foul to put Creighton up 6. He then hit a pair of free throws to put the Jays up five with 20 seconds to go.
Isaacs put up 18 points and five assists without Ashworth against the Aztecs then went off for 25 points and six assists, shooting 5-of-10 from 3 against a talented Aggies backcourt. Isaacs didn’t look for his own shot much against the Fighting Irish but did a great job setting up his teammates to finish with six points and five assists in 26 minutes.
“Just really proud of them,” McDermott told 1620 the Zone after the Notre Dame win. “When you find out in the locker room before the game you’ve got not Kalkbrenner and Pop’s back in the bathroom all morning, sick — he played 25 more minutes than I thought he was going to play, so he’s one tough dude to be able to do that. I’m really proud. That bench really stepped up. Fred rang the bell when we needed him and obviously it was good to see Jamiya hit some shots.”
Creighton has played eight games this season and has only been at full strength twice. Isaacs, Ashworth and Kalkbrenner — the team’s three most important players — have already missed a game. Mason Miller has missed two games, and Jasen Green missed the closed scrimmage and charity exhibition right before the season began.
The lineup has been in constant flux for Creighton, and the Jays stand at 5-3 after the first month of the season.
Finding their Touch?
McDermott he’s said he built this team on shooting, but unfortunately the Bluejays rank 236th in the country in 3-point percentage through eight games. That’s not going to get it done, especially because teams will continue to load up against Kalkbrenner until the Jays make them pay for it.
If there’s a positive to take away from the Vegas trip outside of the team’s resiliency, it’s probably that the shooting might be trending in a positive direction.
Through the first six games, Creighton shot 28.8% from 3 on 30.7 attempts per game. That included a 1-for-16 mark in the second half that sank their chances of hanging with San Diego State until the end after a competitive first half.
The poor shooting continued into the first half against Texas A&M as the Jays shot 6-of-22. However, the tide turned in the second half, and although Creighton’s defense slipped too much to get the win, Isaacs and Jackson McAndrew each went 3-for-6 from deep and Creighton shot 7-of-15 overall.
That carried over into the Notre Dame game, by far Creighton’s best shooting performance of the season. The Bluejays hit six 3s in the first half and five in the second, finishing 11-of-24 (45.8%) overall.
Over the last two games in Vegas, Creighton shot 39.3% on 30.5 attempts per game. It’s not a coincidence that the Jays went down to the wire with a top-30 team and beat another high-major team in those games.
“We made some good reads,” McDermott said. “We’ve made a lot of those reads, we’ve just missed shots, so it doesn’t look as good. It was huge that those guys stepped up and shot it so well today.”
Ashworth has been the one player Creighton has been able to rely on from deep all season at 40.7% through seven games. McAndrew shot 8-of-22 (36.4%) in Vegas while starting all three games. Isaac Traudt hit two big triples against Notre Dame. Isaacs (the 5-for-10 outing against the Aggies) and Neal (4-of-6 against Notre Dame) both had big shooting games. Even Mason Miller (last year’s Big East leader in 3-point percentage) finally made one against the Irish after missing his first 13 attempts of the season.
“Obviously, me, Isaac and Mason, we talk a lot like ‘Man, we just can’t see one go in,’” Neal said. “We all work every day after practice, get a lot of shots, and there’s not a lot of missing going on, so it was kind of a struggle to figure out why we couldn’t make them. But I think I started off making a couple and then IT came in and made a couple, Mason saw one go in, so it was great.”
If Creighton can continue to shoot the ball at a respectable rate once Kalkbrenner is back in the mix, the Bluejays will have a chance to get back to the team most thought they could be heading into the year.
Complementary Basketball Needed with Path Ahead
The stretch from Nebraska to Notre Dame was tough for the Jays in a variety of ways, but the road ahead is even more challenging. Up next is a home game against the No. 1 team in the country in Kansas. The Jays will then host a UNLV team that beat Creighton one year ago. They’ll close out the nonconference schedule against an Alabama team ranked 10th in KenPom; the Crimson Tide finished in second place at the Players Era Festival after falling to Oregon in a thrilling championship game.
To navigate this tough stretch and have a chance to go 2-1 or 3-0, Creighton will need to fire on all cylinders.
It starts with the perimeter shooting. If the Jays can bottle that success up and bring it back to Omaha with them, the game will be a whole lot easier. If the likes of McAndrew, Traudt and Miller can knock down open 3s, it makes it that much more difficult to double-team Kalkbrenner, cut off driving lanes for Neal and gum up Isaacs’ pick-and-rolls.
Creighton will need the best version of Kalkbrenner to contend with Hunter Dickinson and the Jayhawks, and it’s hard to get that version if the Jays can’t even get him the ball, which again goes back to the floor spacers performing in their roles. Ashworth and Isaacs will need to make good decisions and hit their shots. Hopefully all three will feel well enough to bring their A game.
While the freshman McAndrew stepped up against San Diego State and Texas A&M, it was Isaac Traudt who came up big against Notre Dame with eight points, six rebounds and two timely 3-pointers. He led a five-man bench unit that totaled 21 points with all five guys scoring (after accounting for a total of nine points in the first two Players Era Festival games, all from Fredrick King). Ty Davis, Jasen Green and Shane Thomas all provided important and impactful minutes against the Fighting Irish.
“This team has been really fun to coach,” McDermott said. “I think they’re connected. I think guys are trying to figure out their roles, and when you have young guys that are trying to figure out their roles, they don’t understand that you just have to prepare yourself every day with enthusiasm and emotion and effort, and then if your number’s called, chances are you’re going to be ready for it. To see the bench go 8-for-12 from the field, we don’t win the game [without that]. Our bench has not played great, as good as what I think they can play, so today it was good to see Ty out there zipping it around, making a couple plays; Shane making some big defensive plays and then on a back-cut late in the game for a basket after not playing the whole game.
“We talk about it all the time: be ready if your number is called. That doesn’t mean your number is going to be called, but I think the confidence that that group will get from today, that not only was their number called, but we really needed them because of injury and illness to some of their teammates, that they were able to step up and do some really good things.”
Creighton doesn’t need star performances out of any of its supporting cast members. Simply doing their jobs and filling their roles should be enough. It hasn’t happened very often this season, which has put a lot of responsibility on the team’s stars.
If the Notre Dame game was the start of better play from supporting pieces and not simply a flash in the pan, the trip to Vegas can be considered a success despite the record.
