Nebraska snapped the stream of road wins in the I-80 rivalry on Sunday, handing Creighton men’s basketball a 71-50 loss in front of a packed and rowdy Pinnacle Bank Arena crowd.
The Huskers improved to 9-0 in the season, the program’s best start since 1977, and dropped Creighton to 5-4. The Bluejays have lost back-to-back games in the series for the first time since 1997, and the Huskers have now won three of the past four, all by double digits.
The Bluejays fell behind early and never truly recovered as Nebraska’s swarming defense gave them fits all game.
“Nebraska was the tougher team, they were the more connected team,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “I thought the start of the game was going to be critical, and I was right. I just felt like we needed to get off to a good start with this crowd and not allow them to get off to the start they did … I thought we had some decent looks at the basket, but with every miss I thought their defense had a little more teeth to it, and we just didn’t respond or react to it very well.”
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
Beyond Make-Or-Miss
The Jays failed miserably to make that fast start happen, missing 13 of their first 14 shots and turning it over twice as the Huskers used a 13-0 run spanning nearly six minutes to build a 15-2 lead.
Creighton showed some life, briefly trimming the deficit to six with a chance to cut into it more with five minutes to play in the first half. However, the Jays gave Nebraska three looks from the perimeter on one possession thanks to a pair of offensive rebounds from the 6-foot-10 Rienk Mast, who had a guard switched onto him. The third attempt went down, sparking an 8-0 Nebraska run, and the Huskers maintained a 14-point leading heading into halftime.
Defensive rebounding has been a big problem for Creighton this season, and while second-chance points were even overall at 8-8, that was a key play featuring both toughness and poor luck that went against Creighton.
“That that can’t happen,” McDermott said. “For the most part — they got eight offensive rebounds, we got nine, but that that was a critical one, I felt, because I thought we had gained some of the momentum back and were trying to get to that locker room down six or seven instead of 14.”
Nebraska then opened the second half with a 9-3 run to stretch the lead to 23, and that was it.
The road team had won the matchup in each of the previous four seasons, and a lot of that had to do with shooting variance. The past three years, Creighton attempted 40, 40 and 42 3-pointers. The Jays shot 25% and 28.6% in the two losses and 35% in the one win, with most of the makes coming in the first half as the Jays built a big lead early and cruised.
On Saturday, against a defense that allows one of the highest 3-point rates in the country, Creighton missed its first eight 3s and 18 of its 21 in the first half. They finished 8-for-33 in the game, 24.2%. Coming off their best shooting game of the season against Nicholls on Tuesday, the Jays regressed to their early-season 3-point woes.
Isaac Traudt, Jasen Green and Blake Harper all entered the game shooting better than 38% from 3 on the season and went a combined 2-for-11. With the way Nebraska was going to load up against Creighton’s primary playmakers and prevent post-ups, those guys needed to make them pay from the corners.
“The first half, our shooters, I thought, had pretty good shots,” McDermott said. “There were a couple I didn’t like, but there’s a reason Nebraska gives up more 3s than anybody in the country. That’s kind of their philosophy. They’re going to send you hard to baseline, they’re going to trap it. If you can get it out of there successfully, you’re probably going to get a decent look. Their second efforts are really good with a late challenge, and that probably was in our head a little bit. Having said that, we’ve worked on that all week, knowing that that was their technique defensively.
“But like I said, once they got ahead, it’s like there was blood in the water and we were in trouble.”
To be a good team, however, one must be able to win in different ways. Creighton certainly didn’t on Sunday. Beyond the frigid 3-point numbers, the Jays only went 8-for-19 inside the arc and only scored 12 points in the paint. Creighton fell right into Nebraska’s trap and didn’t have an answer for what the Huskers were throwing at them. The off-ball movement got stagnant and the ball-handler often froze up when the Huskers put two or three on the ball.
Josh Dix only took five shots all game, finishing with nine points and three turnovers. Owen Freeman missed a shot on Creighton’s first possession and didn’t shoot again, going scoreless in 16 minutes. Harper and Green combined for three points on 1-for-8 shooting. Nik Graves only made one shot, tacking on six free throws to finish with nine points.
“There were just some points I felt like we would get a little bit sped up,” Green said. “We worked on it all week through our practice, just the type the defense that they would play, and I feel like we handled it decently well. We were getting pretty good looks. A lot of them weren’t falling in the first half, and I feel like that kind of spiraled into us not being able to get back into what we were doing. I don’t know if it was a confidence thing while the shots weren’t falling, or if it was the environment, but I don’t know. We just couldn’t get shots to fall, and that was just a big part of it.”
Sparkplug Swartz
If there was a bright spot for Creighton in the game, it would have to be the fearless play of Austin Swartz. The sophomore was the lone Bluejay in double figures with 16 points on 7-of-15 shooting, five rebounds, two steals, one assist and two turnovers in a season-high 23 minutes off the bench. He played the third-most minutes on the team, narrowly ahead of the team’s starting point guard in Graves.
“He did a good job of finding holes in their defense,” McDermott said. “I thought some of the other guys didn’t read the situation and flash to the right spot, and Austin’s got a feel for the game that way, where I think he can help us. He’s getting better, and that’s why he’s playing a little bit more. I think with Hudson being out, he’s done a good job of taking advantage of the opportunity that’s been presented to him. He was the best today in terms of understanding what needed to be done and how to do it.”
Swartz had some unfortunate rim-outs on good looks from the perimeter, finishing 2-of-8 from 3, but he got it going from mid-range, looking confident off the bounce to get to his spots.
Graves’ playing time has fluctuated this season, and he logged a DNP-CD in Creighton’s win over Oregon. However, with Hudson Greer sidelined for at least a couple weeks, he poured in 11 points in 13 minutes against Nicholls and followed that with Sunday’s performance.
Swartz had a good offseason, showing the coaching staff what he’s capable of offensively. It didn’t quite translate into the games early in the season, and McDermott pointed to some defensive concerns that have prevented him from earning a larger role to this point. However, with the way the team is playing now and with who isn’t available, McDermott may have no choice but to rely on him more moving forward.
Two Teams in Different Places
McDermott made some comments prior to the game and echoed them afterward that seemed to be pointed as much at his team as they were heaping praise on Fred Hoiberg’s Huskers.
“I was telling Fred I think they’re their role players are really champions in their role, and that’s a little bit harder to accomplish in this day and age, because guys don’t necessarily stay in one place,” McDermott said. “Sam Hoiberg was the difference in the game today. I know, because I’ve known Sam a long time, Sam doesn’t care if he scores, Sam doesn’t care if he gets an assist. Sam just wants to win, and I think Cale Jacobsen falls into that same boat. I think they just do whatever their team needs them to do, and it’s not about them …
“I just think they have some guys that really do their job well, and it’s hard to get them flustered because of that. If you would have told me Pryce [Sandfort] was going to get 13 and Rienk [Mast] got 20 but at least had to work for it, I’d have thought it would have been a pretty competitive game. But, you know, Sam was really the difference.”
The Husker head coach’s son, who walked on out of Lincoln Pius X High School, finished with 15 points and five assists, shooting 6-of-10 from the field including 2-of-4 from deep. He made Creighton pay for playing off him at times and also took advantage of its bigs in space to get to the rim for layups.
Hoiberg, Mast and Sandfort combined for 49 points on their own, one shy of Creighton’s total.
Nebraska is 9-0 in large part because all the pieces — new and old — have fit together. They’re playing on a string on both ends of the court and they’re all willing to do the hard stuff.
Creighton, on the other hand, is still searching. Searching for guys who will give it their all every time out, guys who will do the little things to make teammates better, searching for lineups that click and guys McDermott can rely on.
“I’m not really concerned about our opponents right now,” McDermott said. “There are just so many things we have to get better at. I’ve got to hold some guys to higher standards on a few things, and at the end of the day, that’s on me. Your team ends up being what you allow, and there’s been some slippage and an inability to take things from the practice floor to the game floor that we have to get fixed, and I think we have some guys that are getting better, and those guys that are getting better are going to play a little bit more.”
McDermott has made similar comments multiple times, after wins and losses. It truly seems like the Bluejays are approaching a crossroads.
They’ll have five days to do some soul searching before returning to CHI Health Center Omaha to host Kansas State on Saturday.
