For the second time in three games, Austin Swartz played the hero as Creighton men’s basketball rallied to beat Xavier 94-93 at CHI Health Center Omaha Wednesday night.
After hitting a 3-pointer to send the Georgetown game to overtime on Jan. 13 then scoring seven of the team’s 10 in the extra period, Swartz hit a game-winner with 0.6 on the clock Wednesday to complete the season-sweep of the Musketeers.
The sophomore was one of five Bluejays in double figures as Creighton shot 54.2% from the field and from 3, knocking down 13 triples. The Musketeers shot 56.9% (the same percentage the Hoyas shot in their loss to the Bluejays) and hit 12 3s of their own. Creighton’s 10-point advantage at the free-throw (17-of-24 versus 7-of-8) line proved just enough to offset an eight-point edge in the paint for Xavier (44 to 36).
“We got Xavier’s best effort tonight,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “They had some guys shoot it that had not been shooting it particularly well … Of course, Austin, instead of just making the free throw, he decided to miss it and chase it down and throw in a prayer. They’re hard to explain sometimes, how these games happen, and that’s why you play ‘til the end.”
Here are three takeaways from the win.
Finding a Way
The final three possessions determined the game, and they all went Creighton’s way.
First, on a day where stops were few and far between, Creighton had to buckle down and play some defense to give itself a chance.
Trailing 93-91 after a Blake Harper layup with 45 seconds to go, Xavier needed one bucket to all but ice the game. On the previous possession, the Musketeers executed a high-low play to get Tre Carroll (6-foot-8, 235 pounds) an entry over the top of Josh Dix (6-foot-6, 205 pounds) for an easy bucket.
After scoring seven points on 3-of-7 shooting in the first meeting with Creighton, Carroll went off in round two. He scored 17 points in the first half alone and made his first eight shots before finally missing a couple. He made his last four, though, and finished with a game-high 29 points on 12-of-14 shooting.
Xavier ran some time off the clock then went back to the high-low play, but Dix fought Carroll hard enough to deter the entry, then when Filip Borovicanin drove past Harper, Dix stepped over in help and challenged the shot vertically, forcing a miss that went out of bounds off a Musketeer with 11.7 to go.
“It was incredible,” McDermott said. “He made a heck of a play. We just decided to roll with it. Josh made the decision to guard Carroll one-on-one in that situation so we didn’t give up an easy 3; he was kind of picking apart our double team. Big stop, and obviously we had some good fortune late in the game.”
On the ensuing possession for Creighton, Swartz put his head down and drove to the basket, drawing a foul with 4.3 on the clock. He made the first free throw, then Xavier coach Richard Pitino called a timeout to give him some time to think about the second.
I’ll let him describe what happened next.
“I lowkey got iced a little bit,” Swartz said. “But I came out of timeout, shot it. It felt good, but it looked a little long, so I was just going to chase after it. I saw it bounce right, kind of took it from [Roddie Anderson III], was going to head to the basket, but [Isaiah Walker] got in my way, and honestly, I was just trying to draw a foul because he had kind of impeded my path. Then, of course, you’ve just got to get a shot up on the rim when there’s one second left, two seconds left. I wouldn’t say I threw up a prayer, but I was trying to draw the foul, and it just happened to bank and go in.”
AUSTIN CALLED GAME.#GoJays pic.twitter.com/Hk2BgX4i90
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 22, 2026
Officials reviewed the play and determined the ball went through the net with 0.6 on the clock, giving Xavier one last chance — one the Musketeers nearly capitalized on. Anderson started to the left of the basket, sprinted to his right and heaved the ball the length of the court — right to the rim where Walker had cut along the baseline. He got his hands on the basketball and tried to throw it on, but it caught the back of the rim and bounced out as time expired.
“It was an unbelievable pass,” McDermott said. “Initially, we weren’t going to put anybody on the ball, and then we decided in the timeout to do so. We thought they were going to try to throw something to the top of the key, and we wanted to make that a tougher pass. The kid made a made a hell of a pass, and fortunately the basketball didn’t go in.”
Creighton trailed by four with less than a minute to play but scored the final five points of the game to steal it and improve to 12-8 overall (6-3 Big East). While the resiliency to pull it out speaks well to the team’s character and determination, the way the game played out also leaves the Bluejays with a lot to work on moving forward.
“You don’t get the good fortune if you don’t keep playing,” McDermott said. “You have to play until the clock hits zero. We talk to our guys all the time in practice, you want to take care of business, make your free throws, don’t turn it over late in games, so that you don’t get in a situation where something crazy can happen when you’ve got a lead. We just made enough plays, but we also missed some free throws down the stretch, we stepped in on a missed free throw by them, we gave up a free-throw rebound. So there were things we didn’t do perfectly, and this team’s got a long ways to go defensively.
“Let’s, let’s be honest. We can’t stop anybody right now, and we’ve got to try to solve that problem.”
Bench Boost for Bluejays
Josh Dix led the way with a season-high 19 points and Swartz finished with 16, but Creighton doesn’t win the game without its bench. The Bluejay reserves outscored their Xavier counterparts 40 to 13.
The star off the bench was Nik Graves, who came up just shy of a double-double with 16 points on 50% shooting, a career-high nine assists and zero turnovers in 31 minutes (including 18 in the second half). Graves picked apart the Xavier defense all game and did a good job of deciding when to look for his own shot and when to spray it out to his teammates. His nine assists produced six 3-pointers, two dunks and a layup — giving him a hand in 40 of Creighton’s 93 points.
“He made really good decisions, and he just keeps getting better,” McDermott said. “He got to the rim and made some plays, and then made that big defensive play too at a critical time with the blocked shot.”
The big defensive stand came with less than three minutes to play and Xavier leading 89-87. Anderson looked to attack Graves off the bounce, but the senior point guard held his ground then elevated to block the shot.
“I think at the end of the game like that, if I’m the person being targeted, it’s just sort of like a pride thing, I don’t want to get scored on,” Graves said. “I don’t to be the person to make a one-possession game, now it’s a two-possession game if I get scored on. So just taking pride, making sure that that doesn’t happen, and I was fortunate enough to make a play.”
Žugić came up big as well, scoring all of his season-high 11 points in 13 second-half minutes. He went 3-for-3 from deep after halftime and hit two free throws on the possession before Graves’ block to make it a two-point game.
Additionally, Hudson Greer gave the Jays nine minutes, hitting back-to-back 3s from the same spot in front of the Xavier bench late in the first half then throwing down a dunk on a feed from Graves in the second.
“I think Hudson’s two at the end of the half were really critical, because they gave us a nice lift going into the locker room,” McDermott said. “Fedor, he’s arguably our second-best perimeter defender, probably, and he’s able to give Josh a break, and we’re able to use him next to some of the other guys tonight. We played four guards a lot because of the lineup they had out, and I thought Fedor did a did a really good job. He hit some big shots and made those two big free throws at a critical time.”
Greer had played 17 total minutes and scored six points in three appearances since returning from the injury that sidelined him for over a month, and he didn’t play at all against Villanova and Georgetown. Getting the freshman back in the mix and making an impact like he did Wednesday night will be big for the Jays moving forward.
The Hits Keep Coming
If Creighton fans weren’t already believers in Murphy’s Law, it’s hard to think there may be many holdouts left at the end of the year.
The 2025-26 season continues to throw curveball after curveball at the Bluejays from a health perspective, and this week was no exception.
The first bit of bad news hit on Tuesday when Owen Freeman came down with an illness that prevented him from practicing and left him questionable heading into the game. He had practiced well and was likely set to return to the rotation after not playing against Georgetown, but he wasn’t able to go.
His absence was exacerbated by another stroke of misfortunate in the game. Late in the first half, a Musketeer reached in and fouled Jasen Green in the bonus. He labored through the free throws but asked out of the game, checking out at the 3:51 mark.
Green, who has been dealing with a loose shoulder for a while, led Creighton with 10 points, three rebounds and a block in the first half but did not return to the game. That left Kerem Konan as the team’s only available center.
“We had some crazy lineups out there that haven’t been on the floor together this year, and to find a way with to win without Jasen, Owen’s home sick — not an ideal game for him to be sick with Jasen’s injury,” McDermott said. “Jasen quarterbacks our defense. He’s so important to us.”
Konan played 16 minutes (including 10 in the second half), hitting a pair of free throws for two points, grabbing four rebounds, dishing out an assist and nabbing a steal. For the other 10 minutes, and with Blake Harper dealing with foul trouble, Creighton had to piece together some smaller lineups featuring Traudt at the five with four guards around him. Xavier took advantage of the small unit at times, but the Jays did just enough to survive.
“Kerem hasn’t played that those kinds of minutes all year,” McDermott said. “I think he did a good job. Isaac had to play the five some. Fedor had to play the four some. Hudson gave us great minutes when he was in there.”
Creighton gave up 54 points and allowed Xavier to shoot nearly 65% from the field in the second half with Green unavailable.
“Really, we weren’t prepared for that, because Owen gets sick, and normally if Jasen’s hurt, Owen and Kerem are going to split those minutes, but with him sick and then Jasen going down, it really put us in a tough spot in terms of our rotations and guys understanding where to be on the floor and some defensive coverages and stuff like that. It wasn’t for a lack of trying; I thought our guys fought.”
McDermott did not have an update on Green after the game. The five-day break before the next game couldn’t have come at a better time for the Bluejays.
“Obviously, we’ve got to we got a couple days off here, then we’ll practice again later on Saturday,” McDermott said. “But there’s nobody on the team that needs this break more than him.”
