Creighton men’s basketball followed up its blowout at Xavier with another dominant effort in its Big East home opener against Marquette. The Bluejays overcame a slow start to rout the Golden Eagles 84-63 at CHI Health Center Omaha Saturday night.
Three Bluejays scored in double figures with three others scoring eight or more and 11 players in all found the scoring column as Creighton improved to 7-5 on the season and 2-0 in conference play.
Here are three takeaways from the win.
Bluejay Barrage
Creighton’s first possession of the game ended in a shot-clock violation, setting the tone for the first six minutes of the game as the Golden Eagles’ on-ball pressure took the Bluejays out of whatever they were hoping to do on offense. Creighton fell behind 9-2, missing five of its first six shots and turning the ball over four times.
That’s when Josh Dix stepped up. The senior transfer from Iowa asserted himself and got a piece of the paint off the bounce on back-to-back possessions, hitting a short fadeaway jumper both times. Next time down, he found Isaac Traudt in the corner for a 3. After that, Nik Graves found Dix with a hit-ahead pass for a transition 3 to pull Creighton within three.
“Until you play against Marquette’s pressure, I don’t think you understand it,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “You show it on film, but they make catches hard. They’re very physical with their body, and they’re always poking with their hands. I thought that took us out of rhythm early. But I thought Josh got to his spots and created some stuff for himself and for some other people.”
Dix got the Jays going, but it was Graves who took over from there and put the team on his back. He followed the assist with back-to-back floaters, sparking a 15-0 run. Graves added a 3 during the run before Marquette finally ended its drought with a Caeden Hamilton layup. Owen Freeman had the other five points during the run on a pair of put-backs, including an and-one.
Graves was just getting started, however. He scored the next 10 points with a catch-and-shoot 3, a transition pull-up 3 and an ultimate heat check from the top of the key, drawing a foul on the shot but splashing it anyway.
“It’s awesome,” Jasen Green said of watching Graves go off. “You can really tell after those first couple shots went in that this conference was up through the roof, and it’s going to continue to go that way. We need Nik to be that confident guy, be that point guard for us that can kind of take charge in those situations. So I’m just really, really happy to see that, really proud of him.”
The first couple makes got Graves fired up, and his four-point play produced what may have been the loudest reaction of the night from the CHI Health Center crowd. He said he’s had a lot of conversations with McDermott about showing more emotion on the court.
“I’m usually pretty straight-faced, whether I’m up or down,” Graves said. “So in an environment like this, getting the fans involved, stuff like that, that’s what they want to see, and that momentum helps the whole team and the energy in the building. I was trying to build on the momentum and get some energy.”
Graves made the free throw to cap what was a 25-2 run in a three-and-a-half-minute span. Graves spent most of the rest of the first half on the bench after picking up a second foul, but his 17-point outburst was all Creighton needed to take control of the game.
“It was great,” McDermott said of Graves’ outburst. “I liked the emotion that he showed; we need that from him. But just besides the scoring is his ability to get to spots and handle the ball against their pressure. He really struggled in Vegas against Iowa State, in that game against their pressure. One of the things we talked about prior to the game was we need to be the aggressor. If you’re passive against their pressure, and end up back on your heels, you’re asking for trouble. We needed to attack it, and I thought Nik and Josh did a tremendous job of that early.”
Graves Stacking Days
The first-half flurry of 3s will likely be the lasting memory for Creighton fans coming out of this game, but what Graves did in the second half was equally impressive.
McDermott chose to start him after the foul trouble limited him to seven and a half minutes on the court. No one would blame Graves for opening the half with a temperature check to see if he still had it going. However, his first — and only — shot attempt didn’t come until the 5:20 mark.
On Creighton’s first possession of the half, he found Green on an alley-oop for a slam. Two trips later, Graves found Green again for a layup, triggering a Marquette timeout. He went on to dish out five assists in the half, and that number could have easily been seven or eight had a few more open looks he generated gone down.
“I think it just helped a little bit that I was able to hit a couple shots early on and really, that just opened up a lot for Jasen, whoever else was setting great screens,” Graves said. “I was able to have two people on me, so somebody had to be open, whether it was Jasen for a lob or a kick-out to IT, Josh Austin, whoever it may be. We work on that a lot in practice, just making reads off the ball screens, and I was able to do that.”
Graves’ final stat line: 17 points on 6-of-7 from the field (4-of-4 from 3) and 1-of-1 from the foul line, six rebounds, six assists, two steals and only one turnover. The Bluejays outscored the Golden Eagles by 40 points in his 22 minutes on the court.
That marks two games in a row that Graves has played really well off the bench, something he hadn’t done since his freshman year at Charlotte. He started every game of his last two seasons as a 49er and his first nine at Creighton before McDermott made the lineup change. Since then, he’s played two of his best games as a Bluejay.
“At the end of day, I’m a competitor,” Graves said. “I want to win games. So whatever the case may be, whether it’s starting, coming off the bench, playing a lot of minutes, playing a little bit of minutes, I just want to make an impact for the team, and at the end of day, I want to win games.”
Putting it All Together
Creighton’s 62-point margin of victory through two conference games (plus-41 at Xavier, plus-21 against Marquette) is a new Big East record, shattering the previous best of plus-50 by Providence in 1988.
It’s almost hard to believe this is the same team that lost to Nebraska (by 21) and to Kansas State (at home) before league play began.
“I feel like it’s really important for us, especially because we’re starting to build our confidence up,” Green said. “We’ve had a couple tough losses, but we’ve turned the page pretty quickly with the Xavier game and with this game. We’re just going to keep building off of these two games and keep getting better each day.”
Creighton has scored 98 and 84 points in its last two games. Graves said the team has been studying a lot of film lately and discussing what Creighton basketball looks like, and they’ve done a better job translating to the court over these last two.
“I’ll start by saying just how much we’re getting the ball moving,” Green said. “In previous games, the ball has kind of been stuck a little bit, so we’ve worked on that a lot throughout practice in the past couple of weeks, just making sure that the ball doesn’t stick anywhere and making sure we’re always cutting with great pace, and that’s opened up so many opportunities for us offensively, just getting open 3s and good drives, and especially at the end of drives, showing the ball, getting people leave their feet and then drawing two defenders and kicking out for open 3s.”
A big part of the success has been shots falling at a higher rate than earlier in the season. Creighton has made 12, 16 and 10 3s in its past three games, connecting at a 41.3% clip during that span. Beyond that, McDermott is pleased with his team’s offensive balance.
“If we shoot 40% over at Nebraska, it’s probably a little different game,” McDermott said. “It’s just part of it, and obviously, we’ve shot at a high level. We’re getting, I think, some cleaner looks with some of the things that we’re doing and have a good mix of trying to get it in the paint. We had 34 points in the paint against a very aggressive team. So there’s a good balance to what we’re doing right now, and we’ve just got to continue to grow, continue to get better. It’s a process, and this is part of the process. It’s been a great week, but we can’t lose sight of why we’re playing better, that those habits need to continue on a daily basis.”
Those habits extend to the defensive end of the court, where a lack of communication and attention to detail have cost Creighton this season. They’ve now held back-to-back opponents under 37% from the field. Marquette finished at 34.4%, including 13-of-32 on layups and dunks as Creighton effectively executed its game plan of using verticality at the rim against Marquette’s reckless drives.
“We’ve been more connected defensively,” McDermott said. “I think that starting lineup has helped us. There are a few more talkers in that group than there was in the previous starting group, and I think the guys that are now coming off the bench understand now why those guys are starting and the value that that brings to our team. They’ve all accepted it. I don’t expect them to totally like the role. They’re competitors, and obviously everybody wants to start, but I think they’ve embraced it. Blake [Harper] and Nik obviously have given us great minutes off the bench the last couple games, as has Owen.”
Creighton will briefly step out of conference on Monday to face Utah Tech in its nonconference finale. Tipoff at the CHI Health Center is set for 7 p.m. CT and the game will be streamed on ESPN+.
