No. 22 Creighton built a double-digit lead in the first half and played from ahead for nearly 26 minutes, but No. 10 Marquette rallied to pull it out and extend its home winning streak.
Here are three takeaways from Creighton’s 72-67 loss in Milwaukee Saturday.
Playing the Numbers
Under Greg McDermott, Creighton’s defense relies heavily on the scouting report, studying tendencies and attempting to take away a team’s strengths. Oftentimes, part of that is daring role players to beat you while loading up against stars.
On Saturday, that’s what Creighton did against Marquette. The Bluejays flew around, switched with energy and made life tough on Marquette’s top three scorers. Tyler Kolek, Kam Jones and Oso Ighodaro combined for 34 points on 12-of-38 shooting, and that included six free throws late when Creighton tried to extend the game.
In the first half the plan worked to perfection as the Golden Eagles shot 3-for-20 from 3 with a lot of those attempts coming from guys Creighton was going to live with shooting. The Jays led 30-28 at the break, with turnovers and offensive rebounds keeping the Golden Eagles afloat.
In the second half, however, Stevie Mitchell, Sean Jones and David Joplin combined to shoot 6-for-6 from deep on mostly open looks (after a 1-for-8 showing in the first half). Jones added a couple of buckets at the rim and a pair of free throws to score 12 of his 15 points after halftime, giving Marquette a big boost.
On the other end, Creighton only got seven total bench points while Kalkbrenner and Steven Ashworth combined for 11 points, five assists and four turnovers. While the Golden Eagles eventually got some support for their top guys, Creighton never did. Scheierman and Alexander combined for 41 points while the rest of the team mustered just 26 points on 26 shooting possessions.
The first-shot defense was good enough to score a win on the road over a top-10 team. Everything after that was not.
A particularly costly area was defensive rebounding. Marquette grabbed 18 offensive rebounds and converted them into 18 second-chance points. There was one possession in the second half where Marquette got three looks from deep because Creighton didn’t work hard enough to find bodies and secure the board or force a foul call, and they paid for it as the third shot went down.
Creighton was 12th in the country in opponent offensive rebounding percentage heading into the game, but they didn’t get the job done on Saturday.
And that leads me to the offense…
Solutions Needed
There were two main areas of emphasis on the offensive end for Creighton heading into Saturday.
The first is ball security. The Jays turned the ball over a season-high 16 times against Villanova, and it cost them a win. Marquette was 14th in the country in forcing turnovers. Creighton could not afford to be careless with the ball, and too often it was. Creighton gave it away 18 times — 10 of them live-ball turnovers — which led to 24 points on the other end.
Trey Alexander and Baylor Scheierman combined for eight assists, but they also committed eight turnovers. The other ball-handlers, Steven Ashworth and Francisco Farabello, gave it away five times between them.
Creighton committed multiple shot clock violations. It would be one thing if they came as a result of the Jays controlling pace and turning down risky passes, but they were committing both kinds. Creighton has to find a way to generate more early offense and produce more threatening actions when teams get physical with ball-handlers and take away Creighton’s first option.
The other emphasis was getting the ball inside to supplement their perimeter shooting, and that didn’t really happen either. Kalkbrenner finished with eight points on 3-of-7 from the field and 2-of-3 from the line. The Jays also didn’t capitalize on the couple of kick-out 3 opportunities they got when he drew extra defenders.
Creighton couldn’t find a way to keep him involved enough, and he didn’t play well enough when he did get the ball. He didn’t play through contact well, he dropped a pass that would have led to a layup and he only grabbed three rebounds.
Overall, Creighton only scored 20 points in the paint. This was Creighton’s fourth loss of the season, and the first when 3-point shooting wasn’t the primary reason. The Jays went 12-for-32 (376.5%) but didn’t execute well enough in other areas to beat a great team.
Baylor Bounce Back
Baylor Scheierman has been Creighton’s most consistent performer all season. The Villanova game was a rare occurrence this season where his struggles really cost the team.
On Saturday, he bounced back in a big way. The senior finished with a game-high 23 points, shooting 8-of-15 from the field including 7-of-13 from 3, a new career high for triples. He also led the team in rebounds with eight.
Scheierman came out firing and keyed Creighton to a 10-3 lead at the first media timeout with a pair of triples and a dime for a Kalkbrenner bucket. He scored 12 points in the first half and 11 in the second, bringing it from start to finish.
Saturday was Scheierman’s sixth 20-point game of the season and the 100th double-digit outing of his career.
