Creighton men’s basketball blew a 16-point second-half lead at Seton Hall Sunday, falling 56-54 on a last-second put-back.
Creighton scored nine points in the last 12 minutes of the game and made just three field goals in the last 14 as the Pirates rallied to snap Creighton’s winning streak and hand the Bluejays their first Big East loss.
“Obviously disappointing from our end,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “When you lead a game for 35 minutes, we expect to finish the job. When we got that big lead, we really got casual on both ends of the floor, lost some of our teeth in terms of attacking offensively and then defensively, put them at the free-throw line several times on shooting fouls, and then several fouls 80 feet from the basket.”
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
Snagging Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
If you look at the check list of things McDermott felt Creighton (9-6, 3-1 Big East) needed to do to beat Seton Hall (13-2, 3-1), you’d be able to cross off nearly all of them after the game.
The Pirates are the best shot-blocking team in the country, and they did swat the Jays five times. However, on 55 shot attempts, that’s less than half the block rate they boast overall this season, and Creighton shot 10-for-17 on layups and dunks (compared to Seton Hall’s 8-for-20).
The Pirates are also one of the best at forcing turnovers, especially steals. Creighton came in well under what Seton Hall normally does in both those categories as well. Seton Hall is a good offensive rebounding team, and Creighton held the Pirates to six offensive rebounds the whole game.
McDermott said Seton Hall’s point guard, Budd Clark, makes the team go. He’s one of the best distributors in the Big East. Clark played just nine minutes in the first half because of foul trouble and finished with just two assists while shooting 4-of-13 from the field.
The Bluejays took a nine-point lead into halftime and Creighton had been undefeated when leading at the half heading into Sunday. The Jays extended that lead to 16 just over five minutes into the second half.
Then things went off the rails.
“If you’d have told me points off turnovers were 11-9 them, second-chance points were 9-4 us and Budd Clark only has two assists because we tried to make him a score, I’m telling you we won the game,” McDermott said during his post-game radio interview. “Frankly, defensively, we were plenty good enough to win this game. We got a little tentative when we got that lead. I thought we lost some of our pace on the offensive end of the floor.
“And then, for some reason, after being pretty clean defensively without fouling the first half, we fouled a ton the second half, several of them 60, 70, 80, 90 feet from the basket; those plays just can’t happen. You have to have the mental fortitude not to allow yourself to be put in that situation.”
Creighton was in great shape in the free-throw battle at halftime, committing just six fouls and holding Seton Hall to just four attempts at the line. The Bluejays were only 5-of-10 themselves (so a missed opportunity there for a bigger lead). In the second half, it flipped. Creighton put Seton Hall into the bonus before the 10-minute mark and the Pirates went 13-for-15 at the line, finishing with as many made free throws as Creighton attempted (16). At least two or three times, a Bluejay committed a frustration foul on Seton Hall’s end after a missed shot or turnover.
After all that, Creighton still held a one-point lead and possession with 22 seconds to play. All the Jays had to do was handle pressure, force Seton Hall to foul and make their free throws. They did not do that.
It took Creighton a few attempts to get the ball in-bounded (at one point, they had two players trying to post up their man in the same area, where an in-bound angle didn’t even exist). When they finally got it in to Austin Swartz, he dribbled up the sideline. A pair of Pirates swarmed him with plenty of apparent contact, but it went uncalled and Seton Hall eventually tied him up. Creighton maintained possession, but on the ensuing in-bound to Isaac Traudt, the Pirates again got a jump ball call.
“It was certainly a lot of contact on that sideline over there, and obviously I haven’t seen the film, but to get two back-to-back jump balls in those situations is I’m not sure something I’ve ever seen before,” McDermott said. “But the problem is they were in the bonus and we weren’t, and when we’re not in the bonus, the teeth of their press can be at a whole other level, because you don’t have to worry about putting us on the free-throw line. So obviously, there was a lot of physicality against that press. We knew it, we worked against it, and for the most part until late in the game, we handled it pretty well.”
Josh Dix wasn’t making any excuses after the game.
“I feel like we might have gotten fouled a couple times when they called jump balls, but that’s part of the game,” Dix said. “That’s the Big East. We’ve just got to fight through that, especially on the road, and we’ll get there.”
The second jump ball turned the ball back over to Seton Hall, and Shaheen Holloway called his last timeout to draw something up. Needing a stop, McDermott opted to switch to a 1-3-1 zone defense in part because he felt they had gotten beat off the dribble too easily down the stretch.
Clark attacked Ty Davis at the top of the zone and got to the right elbow, settling for a step-back jumper with 5 seconds to go. However, Jasen Green, in the middle of the zone, left his feet to contest the shot alongside Davis while the Pirates sent everybody else to the glass. That left Swartz one-on-two on the weak side, and one of the two was Seton Hall’s 6-foot-10 center, Najai Hines, who topped the ball to himself and put it back in with a foul for the game-winning three-point play.
“I rolled the dice and they had no timeouts left, so I went with the zone late, thinking that it would stymie them, and it did,” McDermott said. “The shot that they got we were fine with. Unfortunately, that ball bounced right to Hines.”
Here’s another look at the final Seton Hall possession. Creighton in a 1-3-1.
With 0 leaving his feet to challenge the shot alongside 9, it left CU without the numbers necessary to stop the Pirates, who sent four to the glass. pic.twitter.com/ycEL9HSmEM
— Jacob Padilla (@JacobPadilla_) January 4, 2026
It’s hard to lay blame on any player for the outcome. Perhaps Green should have bailed on contesting the shot and instead dropped back to get involved on the rebound. Regardless, the gamble backfired, and all those little mistakes prior meant Seton Hall only needed to make one play to win the game.
Solutions Needed
During the offseason, McDermott said this year’s team would likely need to win more shootouts than Jays fans were used to with Ryan Kalkbrenner anchoring the defense. Based on the additions the staff made, most expected Creighton to be an offensive team with serious defensive concerns.
Through 15 games, Creighton’s defense (ranked 44th in adjusted efficiency) is ahead of its offense (64th).
As McDermott said, Creighton’s defense was more than adequate to win that game. The Jays held Seton Hall to 35.8% from the field with a ton of shot attempts from the mid-range or inside over strong vertical contests.
Unfortunately, Creighton only shot 34.5% on the other end. The Jays saw their streak of good 3-point shooting games end at five, finishing 6-for-27.
There was a brief moment to start the second half where it looked like the offense was humming. Whatever the Jays discussed at halftime led to a 7-for-9 start from the field, including three buckets apiece for Swartz (who finished with 16 points and four of Creighton’s six 3s) and Green (who ended with 13 points on 6-for-7 shooting).
However, in the final 14 minutes of the game, Creighton shot just 3-of-18 from the field with seven turnovers. Seton Hall ripped off a 14-0 run to cut that 16-point lead down to two before Green finally ended Creighton’s drought with a shot inside.
“I have to watch the film,” McDermott said of the offensive woes. “I think during that stretch there were a lot of open shots. It wasn’t like turnovers going the other direction. And there were some that they got you into the late shot clock; that’s just who they are, and they’re really good defensively in that regard. But we had some really good looks at the basket that we didn’t make, and all we needed to make was one more play and the game was probably out of reach.”
Traudt, who has been close to 40% from 3 on high volume since entering the starting lineup, went 0-for-7, and there wasn’t anybody on the bench who picked up the slack (11 points on 13 field goal attempts and eight free throw attempts combined for the five-man reserve unit). Dix shot just 4-for-13, but it felt like half his attempts were grenades at the end of the shot clock that he had to force up. Swartz only took three shots in the last 15 minuets of the game as the Pirates did a great job of playing tight to him and keeping him from getting to his spots.
After the game, Creighton ranks 235th in tempo and 218th in average possession length. Possessions going nowhere has been a recurring problem throughout the season, and on Sunday it was worse than ever thanks to Seton Hall ratcheting up its pressure and physicality. Assistant coach Mitch Ballock told 1620 the Zone he thought that switched flipped around the 12-mminute mark.
“We couldn’t really get to spots,” Ballock said. “We were casual with our catches. We were casual getting to spots. We were casual screening. When we watch the film back, when we see the times that we actually did screen, or we actually caught it with a little bit of teeth to us in a triple-threat position and really got guys off of us, we got what we wanted.
“A play that I remember, we ran IT into a Spain screen and he cracked the five man on the back screen and we got an open dunk, stuff like that. If you do that, if you have that mentality and that physicality on every possession, you get open shots and you get to where you want, your offense starts to flow. But when you step out of screens or bail out of screens, it’s harder when you have guys like that on their side that can get up into you and really disrupt you as a ball handler. It makes things really difficult, and that’s what they did, and they turned it up.”
When McDermott thought he’d have a great offensive team, he anticipated Owen Freeman being a big part of that. The Iowa transfer played just six minutes and didn’t score Sunday, going 0-for-3 from the field (blocked twice and missed a floater). He’s been a shell of himself since the offseason knee injury. The limited role he’s playing now leaves Green as the team’s only real source of interior offense.
Creighton’s two points guards, Ty Davis and Nik Graves, also combined for eight points, three assists and two turnovers.
Without great point guard play or a dominant interior presence, Creighton will have to lean all the way into executing sets at a high rate and playing with great pace, and that just didn’t happen Saturday. As Ballock said, the Jays let the Pirates’ physicality take them out of their game plan completely.
“I thought the first half we were really stale and stagnant on the offensive end,” Ballock sad. “I feel like our movement wasn’t how it had been in the last four or five games. Especially in the first half, we weren’t playing off each other. Then when we started getting a little bit of rhythm and a little bit of flow and started looking like a lot more like Creighton basketball of years past, and then in the second half, like I said, they turned up the intensity … and we didn’t rise with it. We kind of stayed where we were and we thought we were comfortable enough to get it done without really turning up the juice physically.”
Double-Double Dix
During his pregame radio interview, McDermott highlighted the importance of the guards crashing down and contributing on the glass. That produced one of the highlights of the game for Creighton as Graves helped clean up a board in the first half took it coast to coast for reverse layup with his weak hand.
However, the guy who seems to have bought into that message from his head coach the most was Dix. He finished with 12 points, 10 rebounds and six assists for his first career double-double. He had 10-5-2 in the first half alone while locking up Seton Hall’s best perimeter scorers on defense.
There was a lid on the rim for him in the second half, however, as he shot 1-for-8 from the field. Creighton didn’t really get him anything easy. As McDermott has said multiple times, Creighton is relying on him for a lot right now, and his shot-making has really suffered.
The loss unfortunately marred a milestone for Dix, who surpassed 1,000 career points in the first half. He’s the second Bluejay transfer to accomplish that feat this season, joining Graves.
