Ninth-seeded Creighton men’s basketball put on a clinic in the first game of the NCAA Tournament’s first round on Thursday, knocking off 8-seed (and 10th-ranked) Louisville 89-75 in front of a Cardinal-heavy crowd in Lexington, Kentucky.
Jamiya Neal and Steven Ashworth combined for 51 points on nearly 60% shooting as the Bluejays led for over 37 minutes, securing an NCAA Tournament win for the fifth-straight season, a new program record.
“Obviously very proud of my team,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “Our execution was terrific. We beat an incredible team, and I couldn’t have been more impressed with them in our preparation … My guys did a great job, offensively, defensively, Jamiya was terrific, Jackson [McAndrew], big shots in the first half, and then Steven throughout the game running the show for us. It’s a really gratifying win because of who we beat and how good I thought they were.”
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Offensive Explosion in Lexington
Creighton came out firing… blanks. The Jays’ first five shots all came from deep, all pretty clean looks, and none of them went down. Creighton trailed 5-2 at that point.
However, Ryan Kalkbrenner rebounded the last miss, and it led to a layup for McAndrew to take the lid off the rim. Even when the jumpers weren’t falling, the Bluejays were getting what they wanted nearly every trip down the floor. Then the shots started falling, and Creighton buried Louisville with a downpour.
The Bluejays put on an offensive clinic, picking a normally stout Louisville defense apart. They made 17 of their last 25 shots from the field in the first half including 9-of-11 from 3 (and seven straight to end the half). They scored 27 points from the arc, 16 in the paint and six from the foul line to put up 49 points, the most Creighton has ever scored in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game.
Ryan Kalkbrenner only took three shots (making all three) but the attention paid to him opened everybody else up. Ashworth, Neal and McAndrew all scored in double figures in the first 20 minutes as Creighton did a good job moving the ball out of double-teams and finding open shooters. They capitalized on scramble situations after offensive rebounds to hit a couple 3s as well.
Creighton jumped out to a 28-21 lead midway through the half after a Kalkbrenner alley-oop before back-to-back turnovers allowed the Cardinals to make it a one-possession game. McDermott took a timeout to calm his team and the crowd, and the Jays responded with four straight 3s (two each by Ashworth and McAndrew), then stretched the run out to 19-2 to build a 20-point lead.
“Early on we had a lot of good looks that just weren’t dropping, and during that stretch we got four great looks, and we knocked them down,” Neal said. “From there, we were just in a groove, and we just fed off that.”
Louisville made its runs in the second half, but the lead never slipped below 10. Jasen Green (nine points, eight rebounds) put an exclamation point on the win with a slam with 30 seconds to go to clinch the 14-point win.
Creighton shot 57.1% from the field including 45.8% (11-of-24) from 3. Four players scored in double figures and Creighton only turned the ball over 10 times.
McAndrew, the freshman, showed out with 11 points on 5-of-9 from the field (3-of-7 from 3) in his first NCAA Tournament game.
“It’s been a dream of mine to be playing in March Madness ever since I started watching college basketball,” McAndrew said. “It’s a blessing to be here and a lot of credit to my teammates and Coach Mac for putting me in positions to get those shots and those looks, because they are all off of them. And so it was my time to step up and knock it down.”
One More
One Wednesday, a reporter as Jamiya Neal if he found what he was looking for at Creighton after entering the transfer portal. He said he did.
“I wanted to get the best out of my last season, and so far, it’s been the best season,” Neal said. “And I just want to keep it going. I don’t want it to end. I love playing for this team. I love playing for Coach Mac. I love all my teammates; those are my brothers for life, and to get in one more practice, one more shootaround, one more game with them would just mean everything to me.”
Neal certainly played like he had everything on the line on Thursday. The 6-foot-5 guard played the best game of his career, finishing with a career-high 29 points on 11-of-16 from the field (2-of-5 from 3), 12 rebounds and five assists. He’s the first player to post 25, 10, five and 65% shooting in an NCAA Tournament game since Marquette’s Dwyane Wade did so in 2003.
He also spent most of the game guarding either Chucky Hepburn (22 points on 24 shooting possessions) or Terrence Edwards Jr. (21 points on 22 shooting possessions).
In the second half, when Louisville made its run to pull within 12 and the shot clock was winding down, Neal got to his mid-range pull-up and knocked it down. A couple minutes later, he did it again to push the lead back to 17 (a run aided by a Pet Kelsey technical foul).
“Through the season, especially late shot clock, I had to be pretty aggressive,” Neal said. “That was no different today. Just making the shots, I guess.”
The only real blemish on his game was a 5-for-9 mark at the free-throw line, but he threw down a press-breaking dunk late to make up for it.
Neal wanted at least one more game with his team, and he did what it took to make that happen on Thursday.
"These guys believe in me and the player I can be… I didn't see it a lot of times before."
One-year transfer Jamiya Neal dropped a career-high 29 points in Creighton's win over Louisville in the first round. @AnaBellMedia was with the star of the day. pic.twitter.com/CfZCB6i8rw
— Hurrdat Sports (@HurrdatSports) March 20, 2025
Big Man’s Gravity
Neal and Ashworth (22 points, 4-of-8 from 3, five assists) were the stars of the day, but as has been the case all season, everything centered around Kalkbrenner on both ends for Creighton.
He finished with 14 points on 6-of-8 from the field (1-of-1 from 3) and 1-of-2 from the line, six rebounds and four blocks, but those numbers don’t capture his true impact.
Many of Creighton’s clean looks from 3 came as a result of the defensive attention paid to Kalkbrenner, with doubles sent his way from a smaller Louisville team. Kalkbrenner got the ball out against double teams and Creighton did a great job moving it around while the Cardinals did a poor job keeping track of Creighton’s best shooters (15 attempts between Ashworth and McAndrew).
The Jays turned it over a few times trying to get Kalkbrenner the ball, but when they were successful, he either passed it out of the double-team for good looks or scored at a high clip. Fedor Žugić was able to give Creighton 12 minutes coming off the ankle injury in the Big East Tournament final and found Kalkbrenner twice on slick passes for easy buckets while also scoring four points himself (on a 3 and a split trip to the foul line). Neal hit the big man on a lob in the first half, part of Creighton’s first run to create a bit of separation.
Defensively, Louisville took 29 3s (making eight), 23 non-rim 2s (making 10) and only 18 shots at the rim (making 12) and eight free throws (making seven). Louisville only outscored Creighton by two in the paint, but the Jays were plus-nine from beyond the arc and plus-7 from the foul line. The Cardinals had to settle for a lot of in-between shots, which is what Creighton’s drop coverage with Kalkbrenner protecting the rim forces teams to do so well.
“In my opinion, he’s one of the best in the country at that drop coverage because he’s so intelligent and does it without fouling, and his verticality at the rim is really good,” McDermott said of the four-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year. “If you haven’t played against him, it’s really hard to simulate if practice what he does because he’s not leaving his feet every time and some shot-blockers, you shot fake them and they are gone. He picks and chooses his spots to leave his feet and when to wall up and makes it difficult to score at the rim.”
With the win, Creighton advances to the second round, where the Jays will face overall No. 1 seed Auburn on Saturday. The Tigers beat 16-seed Alabama State 83-63 behind 23 points and seven 3-pointers from Miles Kelly.
The matchup will feature arguably the two best big men in the country in Kaklbrenner and Auburn’s Johni Broome. Like Kalkbrenner, the 60-foot-10 Broome is a two-way force, averaging 18.7 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.2 blocks for the Tigers.
