Creighton men’s basketball extended its season with an 82-69 win over Rutgers in the College Basketball Crown quarterfinals Thursday night at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas.
The Bluejays rallied from a double-digit deficit in the first half to secure a double-digit win in the second.
“Very proud of our team,” Coach Greg McDermott. “Especially with our slow start defensively, I believe they scored 22 points on the first 14 or 15 possessions, and then after that, I thought we really did a good job on the defensive end of the floor that allowed us to get out in transition and play the pace we wanted to play with.”
The Bluejays will get Friday off before returning to the court on Saturday for the semifinals at T-Mobile Arena.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Seniors Extend their Careers
Creighton has two seniors on its roster, and those two made sure Thursday wasn’t their final game in a Bluejay uniform.
Josh Dix shot the Bluejays out of a slow start offensively with three triples in the first half. Two early fouls in the second half interrupted his flow and sent him to the bench for a spell, but he went on to knock down another 3 and put an exclamation point on the performance with a breakaway dunk with just under a minute to play.
Dix finished with 14 points and six rebounds, shooting 4-for-8 from deep. He became the fourth Bluejay ever to make four or more 3-points in four straight games, joining an exclusive club that also includes Doug McDermott, Ethan Wragge and Mitch Ballock.
The star was undoubtedly Nik Graves, however. The senior point guard finished with a season-high 28 points, adding eight assists and five rebounds for the first 25-5-5 game of his career.
“He was special,” Dix said on 1620 the Zone. “He didn’t want to lose this game, I could tell. Last college game, possibly, and he played like it. He played incredibly, especially in the second half, and he kind of just took over.”
He played distributor in the first half with six assists of those and put 20 points in all on the board with his passing. In the second half, he took over with his own offense. He hadn’t scored 20 in a game for Creighton all season but went off for 25 in the second half alone.
Overall, Graves shot 7-of-13 from the field, including 2-of-5 from 3, and 11-of-13 from the foul line to score his 28 points. He drew seven fouls in the second half alone, including multiple and-ones.
From the 13:51 mark to the 6:39 mark to play, Nik Graves scored 15 of CU's 20p to extend the lead from 6 to 17.
Season best 28p for the senior from Charlotte. @BluejayMBB #Creighton
— John M. Bishop (@JohnBishop71) April 3, 2026
“We wanted him to get a piece of the paint, we wanted him to push tempo every time, and I thought he did a good job of that,” McDermott said on 1620 the Zone. “And then he used his shot fakes and his head fakes in the paint, which he’s really good at, and on top of the 28 points, he gets eight assists as well, so he’s still distributing, creating opportunities for his team.”
Jasen Green rounded out the Bluejay trio in double figures with 16 points on 7-of-10 from the field and 1-of-3 from the line plus a game-high nine rebounds, two assists, two blocks and a steal. In all, 10 of the 11 Bluejays who saw the court scored, and the 11th, Ty Davis, assisted on a 3-pointer from Blake Harper.
Locking in on Defense
At the start, Creighton looked like a team that hadn’t played in three weeks. The Rutgers zone defense, physicality and full-court pressure had the Jays out of sorts, and shots weren’t falling even when the Jays found an open look.
Creighton fell behind 22-12, shooting 25% from the field through the first 11 and a half minutes of the game. However, more troubling than the cold start was the fact that the Scarlet Knights were getting whatever they wanted on the other end and took advantage to convert nine of their first 14 attempts.
Then the Jays settled in, and the Scarlet Knights started settling. Creighton held Rutgers to one field goal and six points in the last 10 minutes of the first half, using a 12-2 spurt to tie it up then taking a 31-28 lead into halftime.
“I think our defense, after the first 10 minutes of the game, I thought the last 10 minutes of the first half and the first 10 or 12 minutes of second half was really good and allowed us to get out and dictate the tempo and pace of the game,” McDermott said. “We didn’t have a very good start, we looked like we were pretty rusty, but I was proud of the guys for kind of sticking with each other.”
McDermott said adjusting their ball screen coverages played a big part in the turnaround. From the 10-minute mark of the first half to the 7:45 mark of the second, the Bluejays held the Scarlet Knights to 7-for-39 from the field. Despite the hot start, Rutgers finished at 36.9% shooting, including 2-of-14 from 3. The starting backcourt of Tariq Francis and Lino Mark combined for 33 points but did so on 38 shooting possessions with only three assists and five turnovers between them.
“Francis gets 19, but he does it on 3-of15 shooting,” McDermott said. “I thought Josh Dix really made him work for it. I thought he got bailed out on a couple shots, but Nik probably got bailed out on a few too. And then [Lino] Mark, he has 14 Points on 14 shots. We knew those guys were the high-volume guys, and we wanted them to take the shots we wanted them to take, rather the shots that they wanted.”
That’s the kind of defensive performance Creighton will need from the opening tip on Saturday. With the pace their next opponent plays at, the Jays can’t afford to fall behind again, because mounting a comeback will be much more difficult.
Mountaineers Up Next
With the win, Creighton advances to Saturday’s semifinals to face West Virginia.
Trailing Stanford by 3 with less than five seconds to play, West Virginia’s Honor Huff drew a foul on a 3-pointer and hit all three free throws with 3.5 to go to send the game to overtime where the Mountaineers outscored the Cardinal 14-9 to earn the 82-77 win.
Huff scored eight points in overtime and 17 of his team-high 21 after halftime, overcoming a tough shooting game (5-for-14, 0-for-6 from 3) by getting to the line at a high rate (11-for-13). Treysen Eaglestaff added 18 points while Brenen Lorient chipped in 14 points and seven boards.
West Virginia won despite shooting 2-for-20 from 3 by scoring 44 points in the paint and shooting 22-for-26 from the foul line, none bigger than the final three in regulation.
The Mountaineers make their hay on the defensive side of the ball, ranking 17th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to KenPom. Teams shoot just 45.9% inside the arc against West Virginia (12th) with the 14th-farthest average distance of attempts at 7 feet.
The Mountaineers play at one of the slowest paces in the country, ranking 362nd in tempo and 349th in average possession length at 19.3 seconds. They also force opponents into taking 18.1 seconds per possession, 304th.
Creighton will have to find a way to speed up the pace, and the best way to do that is getting stops to trigger fast breaks. West Virginia is pedestrian on offense, ranking 150th in adjusted offensive efficiency and below 150th in nearly every offensive category KenPom lists.
Creighton will get a practice in and install the scout for the Mountaineers, but McDermott said a big part of this trip is making sure it’s a fun experience, and they’re happy to get at least a couple more days together.
“Like I told the guys when we decided to do this, we’re going to have some fun with this,” McDermott said. “We did a lot of workouts. We had a few practices, but we wanted them to enjoy this experience. We’re going to be around for the weekend now, at least for a couple more days, so we’re going to have fun together. This has been a very enjoyable group to coach and be around, and I think they really enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes in a tournament like this, who really wants to play? I think our guys showed that they wanted to play, they wanted to continue the season.”
Creighton and West Virginia will tip off at 3 p.m. CT on Saturday, following Oklahoma against Baylor in the other semifinal on FOX.
