Creighton men’s basketball bounced back in a big way on Tuesday, closing its two-game road trip with a 79-61 win at Seton Hall Tuesday night.
“You never know when you go on a long road trip like this, especially when you lose the first one, how your team is going to react, but obviously they were very together these last couple days when we stayed in Cincinnati and worked out, and then they really took the game plan and put it into action on the floor,” Coach Greg McDermott told 1620 the Zone. “So I’m really proud of them and it sets up a big game for us on Saturday.”
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Lid off the Rim
Heading into Tuesday’s game, Creighton had shot under 30% from 3-point range in six of its past eight, converting at a 28.6% clip on 28.4 attempts per game during that span. That’s not nearly good enough considering the cracks the Jays have shown in other areas recently.
The Jays missed their first four looks from beyond the arc against Seton Hall, although two of them were shot-clock-beating attempts from Ryan Kalkbrenner. Then Jasen Green knocked one down from the corner, taking the lid off the rim.
The Jays hit five of their next seven and never really cooled down, finishing 11-for-21 in the game — the team’s second-best shooting performance off the season behind its 14-for-25 display against Villanova on Dec. 21.
Green, who started the party, knocked down another one to finish 2-for-2, his first game with multiple 3s since the UNLV win on Dec. 7. He added a layup and split a pair of free throws to finish with nine points, two boards and two assists.
Steven Ashworth went 3-for-6 from deep (and is now 10-for-21 over his past three). Fedor Žugić returned to the lineup after missing the Xavier loss with an illness and went 1-for-2, converting through a foul for a four-point play.
The bulk of the credit goes to Jackson McAndrew, however. The freshman went 5-for-8, tying his best outing of the season (at Alabama on Dec. 14). He added a pair of free throws to finish with 17 points, a new career high, and six rebounds.
“I thought he got his feet set,” McDermott said. “He shot the right ones. Generally, he shoots the right ones, and shooters have to shoot. We knocked some down tonight, which was critical.”
McAndrew had been mired in a slump, snapping a streak of 13 straight games in single digits. He shot 16-for-57 (28.1%) from 3 during the streak. Before Tuesday, his last double-digit scoring performance was a 12-point game on 4-for-7 from deep at Butler on Jan. 11.
“It’s been a while,” McAndrew said. “It’s good to be back.”
Sharing the Sugar
In all, Creighton had four players score in double figures, plus Green with his nine.
Kalkbrenner finished with a game-high 20 points on 9-of-13 shooting, nine rebounds, two blocks and two assists. He’s shot 28-of-33 from the field (including 28-30 inside the arc) in his last three against the Pirates.
Kalkbrenner’s back-up, Fredrick King, was third on the team, scoring 12 points on 4-of-5 from the field and 4-of-4 from the line in eight minutes. He threw down a couple dunks and denied one by Seton Hall big man Emmanuel Okorafor, who King played against in high school as part of the NBA Academy system.
“I liked what he was doing on both ends of the floor,” McDermott said. “He was sealing the rim really well and defensively, he made a couple of good plays and a couple good reads with his hands being very active. He earned the right to be there. The reality of it is Fred would play a lot of minutes on a lot of teams across the country. He just happens to be backing up one of the best centers in the country. He’s played an unbelievable role for us, and a very difficult role, to be honest, but he does it with a smile on his face. Good things happen to good people, and Fred had that one coming.”
Ashworth didn’t even attempt a shot in the first 11 minutes but finished with 11 points on 50% shooting, eight assists and five rebounds. Jamiya Neal only attempted one shot and only scored four points (all from the line) but dished out six assists and grabbed five boards.
As a team, Creighton recorded 21 assists on 27 field goals, shooting 62.8% for the game including 82.4% in the second half.
Positives and Negatives
As efficient as Nebraska was shooting the ball, Seton Hall was the exact opposite. Creighton held the Pirates to 8-of-34 from the field in the first half and 11-for-48 through the first 30 minutes or so. Seton Hall made some shots late, in part against Creighton’s reserves, but even after the Pirates made 13 of their last 19, they still finished 35.8% for the game.
The key for Creighton was the job Neal did on Seton Hall’s leading scorer, Isaiah Coleman. He finished 7-for-19 from the field to get his 18 points.
“Defensively, we were connected from the start,” McDermott said. “We were willing to live with a few shots by a few of their guys, but we wanted to try to take Coleman out of it. I thought it was the best defensive game Jamiya Neal has played in a Creighton uniform. He was incredible. He was beating him to spots the entire game. Without having a field goal, he had his fingerprints all over.”
As locked in as Nebraska was defensively and as much as elite shot-making can cover up many flaws, there were still persistent issues that will cost Creighton against better competition if the Jays don’t clean them up.
First was the defensive rebounding, which hasn’t been a season-long issue but has hurt Creighton in key spots. Seton Hall missed a lot of shots, but even so, the 35.5% offensive rebounding rate (16 total offensive rebounds) is higher than Seton Hall’s 31.6% rate on the season and much higher than the 27% Creighton is allowing. That led to a 19-0 edge in second-chance points for the Pirates or the game would have gotten even uglier in the Bluejays’ favor.
The other issue is one that has plagued Creighton all season: turnovers. The Jays gave it away 15 times, which hurts even more on a day when they were making shots at such a high clip. Some of those turnovers were shot clock violations, travels or forced passes early, but Seton Hall’s full-court pressure also caused Creighton plenty of problems for a long stretch in the second half.
“I have to go back and watch it,” McDermott said. “I thought we caught it too close to the baseline oftentimes, and we got stuck there. We had some guys out of position a few times with the attack. I thought we had Kalk or Fred in the middle and could have used that a little bit more, as we did when the game went on. We used that as an outlet, and those guys made good decisions. We’ll look at that on film. We’ll try to clean it up and get ready for Saturday.”
Nitpicking aside, and as bad as Seton Hall has been this season (200th in KenPom), the Pirates have been much more competitive lately. McDermott said he was happy with the effort as a whole.
“When you consider how Seton Hall has played in this building, they had Villanova down double digits the second half, they beat UConn here. They just went toe-to-toe with St. John’s in the Garden for 36 minutes of that game, and St. John’s got away from them the last three or four minutes. This team’s been playing good basketball and defensively, they cause a lot of problems with their activity. When they went small there, that makes it again, a little bit difficult for us when we want to keep Kalk at the basket.
“But I couldn’t be more pleased. The road trap didn’t start great, obviously. Xavier played a great game and I’m not sure the Lakers would have beat them on Saturday, but we did some things better than we did on Saturday, and that’s encouraging as we move into the last regular season game.”
Up next for Creighton is a return home to close out the regular season against Butler on Senior Day Saturday night.
