Creighton improved to 2-2 in Big East play and secured its first win over a top-25 team on Saturday as the Bluejays held off a second-half rally at home against No. 23 Providence for a 69-60 win.
The Jays (11-4) won despite shooting just 30.3% (7-for-23) from 3-point range by holding Providence to 36.9% shooting overall.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Splashworth
Steven Ashworth was one of the best shooters in the country at Utah State last season, but he’s had a difficult time finding his stride at Creighton. Entering Saturday, he was averaging 8.1 points while shooting a career-low 34.7% from 3, nearly nine percentage points below where he was a year ago.
With Ashworth struggling to hit shots on offense and giving up size on defense, Coach Greg McDermott has turned to Francisco Farabello in Ashworth’s place down the stretch in multiple games this season. That wasn’t the case on Saturday.
With Creighton up by six and the shot clock winding down, the ball found its way into Ashworth’s hands near the short corner with Providence’s best defender on him. Ashworth sized him up, took one dribble toward the baseline then stepped back for the corner 3, burying the dagger with 54.2 to play.
“It was awesome,” Ashworth said. “I think that this team prides itself on everybody staying ready for when their moment is called, and I think we’ve got eight or nine guys that we’re comfortable taking different shots in different situations. And so tonight it was my opportunity to make a play there. Coach Mac has always been great about keeping my confidence high and my positivity there, and I’m confident those shots going in.”
Ashworth finished with 12 points on 4-of-7 from the field (2-of-4 from 3) and 2-of-2 from the foul line for his first double-digit scoring game in Big East play and sixth of the season. He had shot 4-for-18 from deep in his first three conference games, but said his confidence never wavered.
“I know how talented I am, I know how hard I’ve worked, and these teammates just make it that much easier,” Ashworth said. “And so when I trust in them, they have that trust in me and I always know I should be confident because of how much time we spent together and how much time we’ve put in.”
Gotta Finish
Creighton has now held double-digit leads in each of its first four Big East games, and in each of them, the Bluejays have surrendered runs to let the opponent back into the game. The rough stretches against Villanova and Marquette ultimately cost them the games, while Georgetown’s run simply made the final score look a little closer than it really was.
The Providence run looked a lot more like the first three, but this time the Jays managed to hold on.
“I hope we can keep getting 16- and 18-point leads and then we’ll figure it out from there,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “It’s a great problem to have. We’ve done some good stuff to get into that position and as I told the team in the locker, we just have to figure out a way to, when you have a chance to step on their throat, you need to step on their throat, because it’s really three or four more possessions. You score three out of four and you stop them four in a row, it’s a 25-, 26-point game and the game is over.
“We go back and we look at those possessions offensively, defensively, just like we did against Villanova. What could have we done better? Did we get the shot that we wanted and did we just miss it or did we make mistakes? Against Villanova, we made a lot of mistakes during that stretch.”
The game was tight early, but Creighton opened up a commanding lead with a strong finish to the first half and an even better start to the second. The Jays put together a 19-2 run including 11 straight to start the second half to take a 48-30 lead three and a half minutes in.
After missing their first six shots of the half, Josh Oduro finally converted on a dump-off, and the comeback was on. Providence used a 12-2 run to make it a single-digit game, then an 11-2 run to pull within one.
“When you have a stretch like that, a 13-, 14-possession run where you have an ability to create some separation, that was really good and that’s going to be the part of the game you look to to see where we got the separation,” McDermott said. “I thought during that stretch in the second half when they got back into it I thought we had some decent looks at the basket, Mason [Miller] had two wide open ones, Baylor [Scheierman] had a wide open one.
“Obviously they were really squatting on Kalk in the post and providing some help, so it was hard to get him get him the ball with an angle. To loosen that up you got to make a few 3-point shots and during that stretch we just couldn’t.”
The Jays stopped the bleeding at that point, however, and stretched it back out as Trey Alexander, Ashworth and Baylor Scheierman all made big plays to secure the victory.
Backcourt Battle
Trey Alexander and Devin Carter are two of the most well-rounded, productive guards in the Big East, and the battle between the two lived up to expectations.
After Creighton built the big lead early in the second half, it was Carter who led the Friar comeback, scoring 10 points and assisting a Jayden Pierre 3 during a 19-6 Providence run that cut the lead to one. The last of his buckets was a 3 from just inside the halfcourt logo.
On the other end, Carter got caught going under a screen and Alexander pulled up, hitting the 3 in Carter’s face and letting him hear about it. Alexander forced a Carter miss on the next play as well and the Jays built the cushion back up enough to hold on for the win.
“It’s awesome to watch greatness in anything,” Ashworth said. “I think that there were times where tonight there was a lot of greatness and I think that that’s the message for us is how do we consistently keep that greatness going. I remember watching [Alexander’s 3] from the corner, I was keeping the space, trying to get Trey and Kalk as much room on that side pick-and-roll and he went under twice and I was saying ‘Shoot it, shoot it,’ and he did and it was knock-down. And then I think Trey reminded all of us not to go under his ball screens or something like that.”
Carter finished with a game-high 25 points on 11-of-22 shooting (3-of-7 from 3), 10 rebounds and three assists.
Alexander was the primary defender on him, and Creighton could have been in trouble late in the first half when he picked up his second foul and took a seat with 6:01 to go and Creighton up by three. Francisco Farabello checked in for him and took the assignment, and Carter immediately scored on him. That was his last bucket of the half, however, as Farabello forced him into two contested misses and a turnover and the Jays extended the lead back out to seven at the break.
Alexander finished with 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting including 2-of-3 from deep, five rebounds and five assists, following up his season-high 25 points at Georgetown on Tuesday with another big game. About the only thing he didn’t do well was shoot free throws, missing four of his seven attempts, but he made up for the misses down the stretch with his defensive effort on the other end. He also surpassed 1,000-point threshold in his career on a 3-pointer in the first half.
“The way they were defending, they set the big kid under the rim, so we just put Trey in some space and let Trey do what he does,” McDermott said. “He’s got the ability to make that mid-range shot; not a lot of guys make that at as high a clip as he does. And then when they went under twice, he had the confidence to shoot that 3 off the dribble. But I’ve said it before, Trey works on his game, so he’s ready for moments like that because of the work he’s put in in advance.”
Additionally, nobody besides Carter scored more than 12 points for Providence, playing in its first game without second-leading scorer Bryce Hopkins following his season-ending knee injury.
Alexander, on the other hand, wasn’t even Creighton’s leading scorer. That was Ryan Kalkbrenner, who put up 15 points in the first half alone and finished with 22 on 8-of-13 from the field plus 5-of-5 from the line and 12 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season. He also held Oduro (14.7 points per game) to nine points on 4-of-17 shooting.
“He’s really given it to some people this year, but we felt like Ryan could guard him one-on-one as long as he could remain patient and stay on the floor,” McDermott said. “Oduro’s so good with a shot fake and getting you at an angle and then, as a result, getting to the free-throw line, and I thought that Ryan did a terrific job on him.”
