Creighton men’s basketball was unable to capture the magic it found Wednesday and carry it into Saturday as No. 17 St. John’s ran away from the Bluejays in the second half for an 81-52 win at Madison Square Garden.
Here are three takeaways from the loss to the team atop the Big East standings.
Bogged Down Again
All things considered, Creighton’s defensive effort wasn’t terrible. St. John’s only scored nine second-chance points on 10 offensive rebounds. The Red Storm shot 46% from the field and only 3-of-14 from 3 (after going 12-for-23 in the first meeting).
St. John’s crossed the 80-point mark largely because of Creighton’s offense, or lack thereof. The Johnnies scored 21 fast-break points and 19 points off 18 turnovers. Far too often, a turnover or a bad shot by Creighton (or a good shot that didn’t go in) gave St. John’s numbers, a head of steam or an uncontested breakaway.
Creighton shot 32.1% from the field (second lowest of the season), 27.3% from 3 (6-of-22) and 50% on layups (8-of-16). Even free throws weren’t a gimme at 66.7% (12-of-18). Add the giveaways (10 of which were steals, fueling the transition attack), and you get Creighton’s second-lowest point total of the season. St. John’s blew up everything Creighton wanted to do.
“They’re an elite team, and one through five, just kind of the way they’ve amped up their defense and switching and just the pressure that they bring, it’s huge,” Owen Freeman said on 1620 the Zone. “We kind of got to see that today, obviously, with how this game went.”
Freeman said he thinks St. John’s is the best in the country at effectively switching, and his head coach backed up that assessment.
“St. John’s, they’re terrific,” Greg McDermott said to open his press conference. “Their defensive versatility makes it very challenging for us with the particular roster we have at this time … Their ability to switch, their bigs’ ability to stay in front of people and guards’ ability to kind of still fight in the post, they’re problematic on the defensive end.”
After several Bluejays got loose against UConn (including three players with season highs), Creighton didn’t have anyone reach double figures. Fedor Žugić led the team with nine points on 3-of-5 from 3, all in the first half. The Bluejays found some weak spots to attack in the Huskies’ lineup on Wednesday, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday.
“Number one, I think we were a little bit tentative and maybe afraid to go in there, at least early in the game,” McDermott said. “And then at times I thought the ball stuck too much, and when you hold the basketball even for a count against a team like St. John’s, you’re really running the risk of stalling out your offense, because they’re able to recover. When we had possessions where the ball moved and we had good movement off the ball, we tended to get a good shot.”
The game got off to a nightmare start, with St. John’s racing out to leads of 8-0 and 13-2. The Bluejays settled in after that and put up a fight from there, trimming the deficit to five late in the first half.
However, the Red Storm closed the first half on an 8-0 run as the Jays missed their last six shots. Creighton was still only down 10 about five minutes into the second half, then the jays missed nine straight shots from the field as St. John’s ran away with the game.
Rotation Remains in Flux
Creighton rolled out the same starting five as last game (the seventh different version this season), but the rotation was dramatically different than what we saw Wednesday as McDermott continues to search for what might work.
One noteworthy change was the decision to play bigger, with Owen Freeman returning to the rotation after not playing against UConn.
In fact, the Iowa transfer had only played more than 8 games twice since the calendar turned to 2026 heading in. On Saturday, he played nine straight minutes in the first half alone and hit the 20-minute mark for just the third time this season. The results were a mixed bag, but he contributed six points on 2-of-6 from the field and 2-of-2 from the line with five rebounds, two assists and a steal.
“That’s what I’ve just been trying to do in practice is just be an anergy guy,” Freeman said. “I know I’ve had a rough season, but I’m trying to turn it around and finish strong. I’m just trying to be that energy guy and give the guys juice.”
Freeman played next to Green for nearly 11 minutes of game time, and the Bluejays were only minus-five (18-23) while they shared the floor. Playing bigger was necessary against the physical St. John’s frontcourt, and it worked to a certain degree.
Elsewhere, Hudson Greer was among Creighton’s first subs after logging just six minutes against UConn because of an ankle tweak. After only playing the last eight minutes against UConn, Blake Harper checked in before the first media timeout, though foul trouble limited him to 15 minutes and seven points.
Austin Swartz, the team’s leading scorer in Big East play, was the 11th man into the game and didn’t score in his 10 minutes. After the game, McDermott said the sophomore guard is dealing with a “foot issue,” and the staff wasn’t sure prior to the game if he’d even be able to go.
With the game getting away from the Jays, all 12 available players saw at least six minutes and nobody hit the 30-minute mark.
Jays Will Take a 1-1 Week
Saturday’s result — and the way it looked — will likely leave a bad taste in the mouths of the Bluejays themselves and their fans. McDermott’s message to his team in the locker room addressed that.
“Like I told the team, our focus needs to be on the good things we did on this trip … That’s where I want their mindset going into Monday,” McDermott said. “I don’t want us to hang our heads. We’ll take a look at what we needed to do better in this game, like we did the UConn game, and pull some of the things that we did well, and we need an upbeat, connected practice Monday and Tuesday in preparation for an important game Wednesday.”
Offer a 1-1 week to any Creighton fan when the Bluejays departed Omaha on Tuesday, and the answer would be a resounding “I’ll take it” across the board. Getting a win at No. 5 UConn is huge for this team, and repeating that feat twice in four days was always a tough task.
Now the attention turns toward the upcoming home stand against DePaul (tied with Creighton in the loss column) on Wednesday and Providence next Saturday. But first the Jays need to take advantage of the day off on Sunday to get healthy. In addition to the Swartz foot issue, McDermott said Nik Graves took a shot to his knee during the game, and Josh Dix sat out practice on Friday.
“We’ve got to get healthy, that’s number one,” McDermott said. “DePaul, it wasn’t that long ago we played them, and obviously there are some things we need to take from that game that we have to do better and then build on the things that we did well when we were in Chicago. We had opportunities to win that game late and came up a little short. As a coaching staff, obviously, we’ll hit the film and try to come up with a really good plan, and hopefully we can get our guys healthy and ready to go for Wednesday because, really, we have two huge home games this week that we desperately need.
“We want to fight for that fourth-place spot in the Big East, and we need these two games to make that happen.”
