Creighton Men’s Basketball Falls to Kansas State Despite New Starting Lineup

Creighton men’s basketball dug itself a 20-point hole and its comeback attempt came up short in an 83-76 loss to Kansas State at CHI health Center Omaha Saturday afternoon.

The loss drops Creighton to 5-5, the program’s worst record through 10 games since the 2009-10 season, Dana Altman’s final year in Omaha. That team started 4-6 and finished 18-16.

“As I told the team, we’ve got a lot of new guys, and that doesn’t happen in our building,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “What transpired the first half is unacceptable. It’s embarrassing. That’s the negative. The positive is I think I found five or six guys that want to fight and compete in the second half. There was no quit in that group. They got back and we had the ball with a chance to tie it, given everything else that transpired. My depth isn’t going to be very deep unless everybody’s on board.”

Here are three takeaways from the game.

Finding Their Fight

The last 10 minutes if the first half went about as poorly as one can imagine. The Wildcats made 12 of their last 19 shots — five 3s, five layups and two dunks. After taking a 23-21 lead at the 9:46 mark, the Jays only made three more shots the rest of the half, missing seven of their last eight shots to head into the locker room trailing 51-33.

“We had we had live-ball turnovers that cost us seven points in the first half; a couple of them were really foolish,” McDermott said. “You lose a seven-point game and that ends up looming large. We had a couple of communication mistakes where two guys ran to one and we ate a 3. And then just a couple closeouts that just didn’t make them feel uncomfortable enough. The closeout is supposed to stop the shot. Our guys were there and didn’t have much impact on the shot.”

On the first possession of the second half, Kansas State got five looks at the basket, thanks to four offensive rebounds, ending in an uncontested put-back to push the lead to 20. Things looked about as bad as they can get.

Then Isaac Traudt buried a 3, sparking an 11-0 run stabilize the Jays. Creighton started to win contested rebounds and began making things tougher on Kansas State’s offense. The Bluejays recorded five blocks and a steal in the second half, and the Wildcats shot 27.8% from the field.

“We just played tougher,” Austin Swartz said. “The 50/50 balls that we weren’t getting the first half, we got in the second half, and there’s no reason why we can’t do that at the start of the game and throughout the whole first half, through the whole game, to be honest with you. It just shows that we have it in us, and we just got to keep on that and do it every single time.”

With shots finally falling and stops stacking up, Creighton cut that 20-point deficit to six after a transition dunk from Owen Freeman around the 12:30 mark. The Bluejays went cold again, going scoreless for over three minutes as Kansas State extended the lead back to 13 — another opportunity for Creighton to fold. It didn’t.

Josh Dix, Jasen Green, Isaac Traudt and Ty Davis keyed a 10-2 run to pull then Jays within three at 73-70 with less than three minutes to play. They had a chance to erase it entirely with a look from Dix at the 2:10 mark, but the shot didn’t fall and Kansas State stretched it back out with a layup and a dunk, building enough of a cushion to close out the win.

“I loved the fight,” McDermott said. “They gave us a chance. We got the ball, and they went under a screen on Josh, and he decided to lift it up at the top of the key, and he missed it with a chance to tie the game with two minutes left. And given where we started, that group showed a lot of fight.”

The fight was certainly encouraging, but it amounted to naught. When you dig yourself a 20-point hole, it takes a lot of energy to get back in the game, leaving little gas in the tank to get over the hump — especially with a shortened rotation.

The Wildcats shot a blistering 11-for-17 from 3 in the first half — a feat they’re unlikely to replicate again this season. They went 1-for-11 in the second half, but the damage was already done. Fourteen of those first-half attempts came from the team’s four 40-plus-percent shooters, resulting in nine makes. Traudt said their closeouts and communication weren’t good enough, something this team simply can’t afford at this point in the season.

“Everyone just has to be bought in to what we’re trying to do and game plan,” Traudt said. “I think if we nail the scout every single time, we’ll be in a better position to win, and we have to be able to carry over what we do in practice into the game. We had too many mistakes that cost us.”

Swartz has scored in double figures in three straight games after totaling just eight points in his first six, but despite the individual success, he said he isn’t happy.

“I don’t like losing, and it’s been tough, especially when we have the talent to win, we have the talent to be a really good team, and we haven’t found our stride yet,” the sophomore guard said. “On the flip side, it was good to see that we have the toughness, that we can play those 50/50 of balls, we can grab rebounds and not give up a whole bunch of offensive rebounds when we want to. So it was really good to see that, but at same time, a loss is a loss. There are no moral victories here.”

New-Look Lineup

After the loss to Nebraska, McDermott said he needed to do a better job of holding his players accountable. On Saturday afternoon, he changed up his starting lineup, rolling out Davis, Swartz and Traudt alongside Dix and Green. That moved Nik Graves, Owen Freeman and Blake Harper to the bench. After brutal starts to both halves against Nebraska, McDermott felt like he had to try something.

“I think having more guys on the floor that have been here that understand what this logo means is helpful,” he said. “Ty, Jasen and Isaac were out there to start the game, Fedor [Žugić] played quite a bit in the second half. That’s important, especially when you’re struggling. When you’re struggling, it’s easy to point the finger and blame somebody else. Those guys, I think this program means a lot to them, and I’m not sure that any of the guys that have transferred here in the past, after being here three or four months, the program means to you what it does after you’ve been here for a while. We’ve got some guys that are still learning that, and it’s got to be a quick education.”

Creighton has used a few different starting lineups this season because of injury, but what had settled in as the new group post-Jackson McAndrew surgery had played just over 54 minutes together and was minus-4 in that time (78-82).

The new starting five, which had shared the court for just under five minutes of game time, all against Nebraska.

The hope was that the change would facilitate more ball movement. Creighton got off to a decent start offensively, leading 20-19 midway through the first half. Five of the Jays’ first sux buckets were assisted.

However, it didn’t last. Through a mix of shots not falling and possessions stalling, Creighton didn’t record another assist the rest of the half.

The lineup change wasn’t a gimmick either. The starting five stayed out there through the first media timeout until the 15:16 mark and ended up playing close to normal starer minutes.

Creighton only had two players in the positive in plus/minus: Traudt at plus-9 and Davis at plus-4. Traudt finished with 18 points and seven rebounds, matching his career highs while shooting 5-of-10 from the field (4-of-8 from 3) and 4-of-5 from the free-throw line in 26 minutes. Swartz also played 26 minutes, shooting 4-of-9 from deep for 12 points. Traudt said the two of them spent time on the scout team within the last two or three weeks but continued to put the work in to be ready for a day like Saturday.

“I think it just instilled more confidence in both of us, I would say,” Swartz said of the opportunity to start. “Coach Mac just trusting us like that, and trusting our abilities, and how hard we’ve worked, especially this last week, to put us in the starting lineup and be able to impact the game, and it just gave us a lot of confidence.”

Davis added five points, five assists, two rebounds and a steal in 29 minutes, hitting a 3 and a layup. He only took three shots in nearly 30 minutes on the court, but he was a big part of the 50/50 ball tide turning in the second half.

“I thought Ty did a great job,” Traudt said. “He’s extremely unselfish. He’s always trying to make plays for others. He competes as hard as he can every single play, and that’s just the type of guy he is. Same with us, he was on the scout team two to three weeks ago as well, and he just continued to work. His voice has been great, he’s been a great leader to us and he plays as hard as he can every single play, no matter what’s going on. I’m very proud of him and it was good to see that.”

Freeman only played 11 minutes, Graves nine and Harper seven. Žugić led Creighton in bench minutes with 21, chipping in seven points.

“I think I’ve got to do a better job, at the end of the day,” McDermott said. “I’m responsible for the product. I recruited them, I coach them. It’s my job to put them in position to be successful, and if that’s not happening, there has to be a lot of reflection on their part, but also from my perspective.

“These guys raised great points. Ty spent some time with the scout team, Austin did, Isaac did … None of them pouted, none of them complained. They just embraced what I was asking them to do, and it’s amazing how the game will pay you back for that. And like I said, the bench was really short in the second half, but if that’s the way it’s got to be, that’s how it’s going to be.”

A Tall Task

The team defense broke down too often in the second half, but one player who handled his individual assignment with aplomb is Dix. Memphis senior guard PJ Haggerty entered the game as the nation’s leading scorer, averaging 24.0 points, 5.3 assists and 8.1 free-throw attempts per game. On Saturday, Haggerty finished with 10 points on 4-of-12 from the field, 2-of-3 from the line, one assist and two turnovers in 34 minutes.

That was all Dix. The senior didn’t foul Haggerty once. On two occasions, Dix blocked Haggerty on one end and took the ball the other way, scoring a layup on the first and earning a trip to the line on the second.

This comes after Dix held Nebraska’s Pryce Sandfort to 12 points and only seven shot attempts in the Huskers’ win over the Bluejays, with much of that production coming against other defenders. Sandfort exploded for 26 points in the first half and 32 points overall on Saturday as the 23rd-ranked Huskers won at No. 13 Illinois.

Dix was the driving force behind Nebraska’s second-half comeback attempt, recording 11 points, seven rebounds and two assists after halftime. He finished with 18 points. However, as McDermott said, he was the one who had the look for the tie and couldn’t get it to fall, and he finished 2-for-7 from 3 on the day. A 41.9% 3-point shooter during his three years at Iowa, Dix is at 34.5% through 10 games as a Bluejay.

“Josh has been terrific,” McDermott said. “To be honest, I’m asking him to do too much. We need him to be a guy that shoots 12 to 16, 17 shots a game, but that’s a lot to ask when you’re chasing around the other team’s best player. Right now, the gap between what he’s able to do defensively and the next guy is really too large to take him off the floor for very long.”

Dix is the only Bluejay to start every game this season, the only one playing over 30 minutes per game and the only one averaging double-digit points. He’s also tied for first in made 3s with Traudt (19 apiece) and is second in assists. While it hasn’t always looked quite like fans were hoping to see when Creighton landed him out of the portal, he’s far and away been Creighton’s most impactful player this season.