Boffeli, Zediker Lead Creighton Women’s Basketball to Win Over Marquette on Flanery’s Birthday

Creighton women’s basketball capped a cardiac 2-0 week at D.J. Sokol Arena with an 80-74 overtime win over Marquette Sunday afternoon.

The Bluejays trailed by 12 early in the fourth quarter but rallied to send it to overtime, where they prevailed over a Golden Eagles squad that beat them by 18 in Milwaukee exactly one month prior.

“I thought it was the best crowd, the best game and the best win of the year,” Creighton coach Jim Flanery said. “I just thought we had great resolve. Marquette is a really good team; they put it on us up there. We played from behind most the game, and I think that’s easier to do at home, but it’s hard to do with a young team. I thought our grit and our willingness to continue to kind of hang in there and believe … I just can’t say enough about grinding that thing out and how much we’ve improved in terms of just being able to find ways to win.”

Here are three takeaways from the Bluejays’ fourth straight win.

Big Week for Bluejay Birthdays

On Wednesday, Grace Boffeli scored the game-winning layup with 2.3 to go on her birthday to seal a 64-62 win over Georgetown.

Four days later, Boffeli came up big to help lead the Jays to a win over the third-place team in the conference on Flanery’s birthday.

“Getting wins on your birthday is amazing, and I thought for 40 minutes plus overtime, we just stayed together and stayed connected,” Boffeli said. “This is an amazing win.”

Creighton improved to 4-1 on Flanery’s birthday since moving to Big East, and that record is 10-3 if you stretch it to include the day after his birthday. Creighton climbed back to .500 overall (12-12) and above that mark (8-7) in conference play. The Jays sit in sixth place in the league and are 4-4 against the five teams ahead of them.

“I know we won a game on my 50th birthday, which I hate to say how long ago,” Flanery said. “I felt good based on Grace’s ability to get a win on her birthday. We’re trending up. We still have some things that we can clean up, but I think we’re trending in a way that I know our fans see the improvement, and as coaches, we see it. As players, the more they see it, the more they’re going to continue to buy in. It’s great, other than when you combine a really good win with your birthday, you do have a lot of texts that you get to respond to.”

Marquette scored on the opening possession of the fourth quarter to take its largest lead of the day at 58-46, but the Bluejays didn’t fold. They gradually chipped away at the lead until they found themselves down by just three with less than 30 seconds to play.

Ava Zediker attacked the baseline out of a ball screen and dribbled through to the other side, where Neleigh Gessert drifted to the wing as her defender turned her head. Zediker dished it out to her fellow freshman, whose defender frantically closed out to try to chase her off the line, flying by as Gessert pump-faked before taking one dribble to the right, setting her feet and letting it fly.

Gessert was the hero of Wednesday’s win, going off for 31 points, the third-most by a freshman in program history and most ever by a first-year player inside D.J. Sokol Arena. However, she had misfired on her first six 3-point attempts and had only scored two points in the first 39 and a half minutes on Sunday. Even so, she had the confidence to fire away with plenty of time on the shot clock, and the ball tickled the twine to knot it at 67-all with just under 20 seconds to play.

NELEIGH GESSERT TIES THE GAME!#GoJays pic.twitter.com/X0KyUmDYet

— Creighton Women’s Basketball (@CreightonWBB) February 8, 2026

“It just shows that Neleigh didn’t have the best night shooting, but she just had confidence in herself, and we had confidence in her to hit that huge 3 to send us into overtime,” Boffeli said.

Creighton used a foul to give and some aggressive traps to get the stop it needed on the final possession to send the game to overtime, where the Bluejays prevailed.

Zediker Takeover

In the first meeting with Marquette, Creighton shot 1-for-13 from the field and scored two points in the third quarter, allowing the Golden Eagles to stretch a five-point halftime lead into a commanding 18-point margin.

In round two, things looked dicey in the third period again as Marquette looked to be scoring at will. However, Zediker wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. The freshman scored Creighton’s first six points and made a number of other plays to keep the Jays afloat

“I think it just all started on the defensive end, just getting after those loose balls, getting big stops on defense, and I think that just kind of carried on to the offensive end, which helped get us going,” Zediker said.

In total, Zediker hit two tough pull-up jumpers and a difficult layup. She got to the basket and drew a foul, splitting a pair of free throws. She forced the defense to shift and generated an opportunity for Elizabeth Gentry to attack a closeout for a layup. She grabbed an offensive rebound, which led to her first bucket. She also tied up a Golden Eagle three times on defense (with possession going to the Jays on two of them) and forced another turnover with a deflection. When she sat down for a brief rest, Marquette pushed the lead from six back to 10, ushering her right back into the game less than 90 seconds later.

After shouldering the load in the third period, Zediker got some help in the fourth and overtime as the Bluejays pulled out the win. The freshman finished with 25 points on 8-of-15 from the field (2-of-3 from 3) and 7-of-10 from the foul line, six rebounds, six assists, three steals and no turnovers in 40 minutes.

“I love how scrappy she is on defense,” the veteran Boffeli said of her freshman point guard. “Guarding the ball, she’s up in the [ball-handler’s] area, and she loves to get tips and deflections, and she’s super aggressive on offense.”

After giving up 22 points in the third quarter (the turnovers Zediker forced accounted for most of Creighton’s few stops), Creighton held Marquette to 18 points on 8-of-19 shooting with seven turnovers in the fourth quarter and overtime. Flanery credited Zediker’s ball pressure and instincts for when to double in the post for sparking the strong finish.

“I just thought we were determined,” Flanery said. “I thought it started with Ava’s ball pressure and maybe just a little bit better early communication, because sometimes when you’re playing younger players and they communicate late, now you’re behind the play a little bit. I thought we stayed ahead of the play a little bit more.”

Bruising Boffeli

Marquette built a double-digit lead in the second and fourth quarters, and both times the Bluejays responded by finding Boffeli inside. She sparked a 7-0 run after Creighton fell behind 30-20 in the first half, then she totaled six points, five rebounds, two steals and an assist in the fourth.

“They’re good enough that they were going to have those types of stretches where it’s tough to guard them, especially with a young team,” Flanery said of Marquette. “If you’re trying to defend something differently, it’s kind of hard to do that in game with the younger team, and we have some defensive limitations. But I just thought, just try to calm them down. I’d written down, after watching the first game, that we needed to whether Grace or Kendall [McGee] were going to score inside, I’d written down, ‘we need to throw the ball inside more,’ just as a form of ball movement even …

“Anytime we got to a point where I felt like we were really struggling for offense, we defaulted to throwing it inside to Grace or putting Ava and Grace in a ball screen. That was not very Creighton motion-esque, but I thought that was what was working the most.”

Creighton won despite shooting 5-for-19 from 3. The Bluejays outscored the Golden Eagles 44-36 in the paint, with Boffeli leading the way. The senior finished with 23 points, 14 rebounds, three assists and two steals.

“Grace is a great leader,” Zediker said. “She’s always talking and telling us what to do or what to look for. She’s been great at that, but also, just down low, her presence, and then on offense, just her post ups and just owning the paint.”

Zediker kept the Jays afloat, and Gessert got the team to overtime, but it was Boffeli who carried the Jays home. Over and over again in overtime, Creighton pounded the ball inside to the 6-foot-1 forward, and she delivered with the team’s first seven points, then she sealed the game with a rebound and two free throws with 6.9 to go.

“I think it just shows how tough Grace is,” Zediker said. “She was battling hard down low, and she got the post up, and I just threw it in there, and stuff happened.”

In conference play, Boffeli is averaging 10.9 points on 60% shooting and 9.5 rebounds. Flanery said he wishes he could turn back the clock to November and call more post-up plays for Boffeli from the start, but he wasn’t sure what she was truly capable of coming off her season-ending injury and transfer up in conference until seeing it for himself. Her growth, and the rest of the team’s improvement alongside her, have the Bluejays in a much better spot than they were just a few weeks ago.

“I don’t think we were that far from being a good team, being where we are today, a month ago,” Flanery said. “It’s just small improvements individually, it’s putting the kid maybe in a little bit better spot to make better decisions here and there. As a coach, that’s gratifying to watch how just how coachable that they’ve been.”