DePaul beat Creighton men’s basketball twice in one season for the first time since 1977-78 with a 72-71 victory in Omaha Wednesday night.
The Blue Demons pulled ahead in the last 35 seconds on a defensive breakdown, and Creighton failed to answer despite two looks at the rim before the buzzer sounded.
“Obviously disappointing, to lead the game virtually the whole game, and to have that transpire at the end is tough to swallow,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “We had a coverage mistake on one end, and then we executed our out of bounds play late to perfection and got it almost to the rim and unfortunately missed the shot.”
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
Same Old Song and Dance (and Score)
Game two played out quite differently than the first meeting between the two teams. DePaul dominated the paint in Chicago, outscoring Creighton 46-12. The Blue Demons also won the second-chance points battle 20-9 and finished plus-four in points off turnovers (14-10) despite Creighton recorded two fewer turnovers. The stat-keepers credited Creighton with one made layup the entire game, on six attempts, while the Blue Demons live at the rim, going 16-for-22 with four dunks.
The only reason DePaul didn’t run Creighton off the floor was one of the best 3-point-shooting performances of the season at 14-for-27 (51.9%), while the Blue Demons finished 5-for-18. The game featured six ties and 11 lead changes, with both teams playing with a lead for more than 16 minutes of games time.
Creighton largely solved the issues that cost it the first game.
The Bluejays scored more points in the paint in the first half than it did in the entire game last time, battling the Blue Demons to a drew in that area through 20 minutes. They finished minus-4 at 32-28 — essentially a wash as Creighton was plus-5 at the free-throw line. The Bluejays finished 11-for-18 on layups and dunks while DePaul went 10-for-21 with only one dunk.
Creighton grabbed three more offensive rebounds and scored six more second-chance points (16-10) and did a better job capitalizing on its takeaways (19-12 in points off turnovers). The Bluejays even shot it well from deep against (10-for-25, 40%) and led for nearly 35 minutes (and by as much as 11 multiple times).
“We got dominated in a lot of areas at DePaul,” McDermott said. “Points off turnovers, we won that battle. We won the second chance points. Points in the paint was lopsided at their place, we are able to even that up. They shot the 3 better than they’d been shooting it, and they made one more play than we did.”
Despite the dramatically different game play, the Bluejays found themselves in nearly the exact same situation at the end, needing a stop to secure a win. DePaul suffered a drought from the field in the first half that lasted more than eight minutes, allowing the Bluejays to create a double-digit advantage. However, they caught fire late in the half — making six of their last eight field goal attempts — and carried that over to the second as they connected at better than a 57% clip in the final 20 minutes. That plus an uncharacteristic 10-for-20 performance from deep (matching Creighton’s output from the line) allowed the Blue Demons to put themselves in position to steal the game again.
After a few lead changes in the final minutes, Nik Graves put Creighton back in front, 71-70, with just under a minute to play. One stop was all the Bluejays needed.
Brandon Maclin, the hero from the first meeting and DePaul’s leading scorer on Wednesday, looked to back Josh Dix down into the paint, but Fedor Žugić dug down and forced the tie-up with 10 on the shot clock and 36.3 on the game clock.
Unfortunately for the Jays, the arrow pointed DePaul’s way, so the Blue Demons got another crack at it. Maclin in-bounded the ball to N.J. Benson then followed for a handoff. There seemed to be confusion during the interchange on Creighton’s part, with Jasen Green chasing after the ball-handler while Dix scraped underneath and recovered to him. That left Benson all alone rolling to the rim while Blake Harper and Žugić hugged their man on the back side. The latter tried to run over late, but all he did is compound the mistake with a cheap foul on top of the finish from Benson.
“They took the ball out with like 10 seconds, and we knew that probably a handoff was coming, throw it to the big,” Dix said. “We were trying to just not jump out so to give their big a roll, and we ended up trapping on accident, and then he got a free lane to roll to the rim. We didn’t rotate over.”
Benson missed the free throw, keeping it a one-point game with just over 30 seconds to play.
Graves said their goal was to force a switch on a screen to create a favorable matchup, and the plan worked with Benson switching onto Creighton’s point guard. Graves attacked to his right hand, spun back to his left and tried scooping it in before Benson could block it, but he left the shot short.
Green kept the rebound alive and Harper secured it for one more chance as McDermott eventually called a timeout with 3.3 to go. They got the ball in to Harper at the elbow with Benson on him. He looked to his left then spun around to his right and attacked, but he too left his shot attempt short. Ball game.
“We can’t have the blown coverage that we had in that situation; it just can’t happen,” McDermott said. “I’m proud that we executed a play that we hadn’t used much late. Blake’s really disappointed that he missed the shot. But we executed the play, we got a good look, and unfortunately, it didn’t roll in.”
As the final horn sounded, the board showed the exact same score as in Chicago: 72-71.
Žugić as a Starter
McDermott stuck with his new starting lineup — including Žugić on the wing — for the third straight game, and the Montenegro native set the tone with Creighton’s first seven points. He drove to the rim for a layup, then knocked down a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer, then threw down a dunk on a cut.
He knocked down two more 3s in the second half to finish with 13 points in 31 minutes, shooting 5-of-9 from the field (3-of-6 from 3). Žugić was one of four Bluejays in double figures with Dix’s 15 points leading the way.
In his first start, Žugić attacked the rim relentlessly against UConn. In his second, he did all his damage against St. John’s from the 3-point line. On Wednesday, he did a bit of both in his most well-round performance yet.
“Fedor is, first of all, just another great defender on the defensive end, but offensively, just someone who can space the floor, the ability to attack the paint, get a paint touch and make a play from there,” Graves said. ‘He’s a bigger guard with a lot of experience just playing basketball.”
In his first three collegiate starts, Žugić is averaging 12.0 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.3 stocks in 26.7 minutes per game while shooting 52.2% from the field, 50% from 3 and 75% from the free-throw line.
He’s now scored in double figures in five of his last 10 after doing so just twice in his first 41 games as a Bluejay.
Big (East) Implications
Wednesday was the first time in a long time that the game between Creighton and DePaul had real stakes.
Creighton (14-15) currently stands in fifth place in the Big East at 8-10. A win would have pulled the Bluejays within a half game of Seton Hall (19-9, 9-8) in fourth. That matters because only the top five teams receive a bye in the Big East Tournament, with the bottom six competing on that Wednesday in New York.
Instead, the win for DePaul pulls the Blue Demons within half a game in the win column of Creighton at 7-10 and gives them the head-to-head tiebreaker with the season sweep. Creighton has one final home game against Providence on Saturday before concluding the regular season at Butler next week. The Friars are also only one game back of Creighton and DePaul in the loss column at 6-11, making that game Saturday doubly important for the Jays.
Seton Hall has at Connecticut, at Xavier and St. John’s at home to finish the regular season while DePaul gets a trip to Marquette and home games against Villanova and Butler.
“I just told them, I want them to be as hungry as they’ve been all season at practice tomorrow,” McDermott said. “We’ve got one more home game, and it’s a really important game for us, because we’re fighting for our lives to try to stay in that four-five game, and we’ve got some people really on our heels right now.”
McDermott isn’t at all surprised to see DePaul among those teams threatening to chase the Bluejays down. The Blue Demons are right where he thought they’d be, which makes the pair of one-point losses all the more painful.
“We’ve talked a lot about our mistakes, but I’d be remiss to not credit DePaul,” McDermott said. “Coach [Chris] Holtmann’s done a great job. They’re really connected on the defensive end of the floor; they make things very difficult for you. We got casual with the ball a few times, and they just took it from us, and they were off to the races.
“But I told my staff six or seven weeks ago, when I’d watched DePaul some, that this team’s going to finish somewhere in the middle of the league. This is not a team that’s going to be at the bottom like they’ve been in the past, and that’s a credit to Coach Holtmann and his staff and that team.”
