Creighton women’s basketball played 30 good minutes against the second-best team in the Big East, but a rough 10-minute stretch in the second half sank their upset bid in a 74-64 loss to Villanova on senior day Sunday at D.J. Sokol Arena.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Seniors Set the Tone
In a fitting start for the occasion, seniors scored Creighton’s first two buckets, sparking a 9-0 run after Villanova had struck first.
Ava Zediker found Grace Boffeli inside for an easy two on Creighton’s second possession, then Kennedy Townsend followed with a driving layup. The senior guard from Kansas City was only getting started, however.
Townsend looked to attack early, putting her head down and driving three times, twice for layups and once for a trip to the line. The jumper fell after that as she knocked down a pair of 3-pointers before going to work inside with a spinning scoop through a foul.
“If you haven’t been following, I haven’t been shooting it too great, so I thought maybe just let’s get to the rim and make some layups, so I did that a little bit,” Townsend said.
Townsend had a game-high 14 points in the first half alone, tying the most she’s scored in a game since pouring in 18 at Providence on Jan. 17. In the second half, she added a few layups on cuts, showcasing another area of her game.
Townsend finished with 23 points on 50% shooting while attempting (and making) a career-high seven free throws in 38 minutes, and Coach Jim Flanery said he loved the way she attacked.
“I thought she played great,” Flanery said. “I know we have one home game left, but this was our technical senior day, and I thought she was good beginning to end. She’s a really good shooter, but I think she’s a little bit better off the dribble than a lot of people think. And part of it is she shoots it so well. When you shoot it that well, it’s a little easier to get to the basket. Just her experience, and I thought she did a great job of attacking. She has not shot very many free throws over the course of her career, but she got the free-throw line and made layups. She was plenty good enough, we just weren’t quite good enough around her.”
The first layup was Boffeli’s only field goal of the first half, but she was a beast on the boards, hauling in eight in the first half alone, important as the teams combined to shoot 36.2% from the field. Nobody else had more than four.
She put in more work in the second half to record her eighth double-double of the season, finishing with 10 points on 3-of-5 from the field and 4-of-6 from the line plus 13 rebounds, including five on the offensive end.
After the game, Creighton celebrated its three seniors, including the injured Kiani Lockett, and their families.
“It was a lot of putting my emotions down until after the game,” Townsend said. “Honestly, it feels really special to be celebrated like that and just to see how much your teammates love you and care about you. Goodbyes are never easy, but I’m really thankful for my time here.”
Townsend is a four-year Bluejay, while Boffeli is one-and-down as a sixth-year gad transfer, but they both felt the love from the Bluejay fans.
“Obviously, we wanted to win that game, but after the game, it was just amazing, just to see everyone show so much love and support to us three seniors,” Boffeli said. “To us three seniors, we’ve gone through a lot this season, ups and downs, but I’m truly just so thankful for our relationships that we’ve made the season together.”
Lockett’s Final Start
Before the game, Creighton introduced Kiani Lockett, in her No. 11 jersey, as an honorary sixth starter. The senior point guard only played four games before an injury ended her season — and her career.
She won’t pursue a medical hardship to extend her collegiate career with Creighton. After tearing her ACL twice in high school and now suffering another significant injury, Lockett is ready to move on to the next phase of her life.
“She had talked about trying to play overseas up until the latest one, but I think she’s got enough damage inside the knee from high school that I don’t think it’s going to allow her to do that,” Flanery said. “We talked to her about it early in the process, but I think she’s going to go to grad school in counseling.”
Townsend and Lockett arrived at Creighton together, and the two were looking forward to leading a young group on the court together. However, fate had other plans, and the senior from Minneapolis has had to take on a different role than she anticipated this year.
“It’s really tough to look over at the sideline and see her sitting over there,” Townsend said while fighting back tears. “It’s not how we wanted our senior year to go, just being people who have been here from the start. God, I just love her so much, and she could have easily just packed it in and sat on the end of the bench and thrown herself a pity party, but she hasn’t done that for one second, and I am so proud of her for that. I think that speaks volumes about her character, and I think she’s going to be so successful with whatever she does in life.
“I know that I’m going to have her for the rest of my life, and I’m so thankful that Creighton brought us together. It’s been hard, don’t get me wrong, but I definitely haven’t felt like I’m alone, because I feel like she has still been a leader despite her circumstances, which is incredible.”
Costly Stretch
For most of the game, Creighton went blow for blow with a really good Villanova team that had won five straight and had already reached the 20-win mark heading into Sunday. The teams traded runs throughout. The game included 10 lead changes and eight ties, with both teams leading for more than 13 minutes of game time.
Townsend scored a layup six minutes into the third quarter to give the Bluejays a 44-41 lead. After that, things started to go off the rails.
Villanova hit Creighton with a 13-3 run — aided by three live-ball turnovers that led to points on the other end — before freshman Ava Zediker got to the rim for a layup to make it 54-49 Wildcats heading into the fourth quarter.
That scored remained for more than three and a half minutes into the fourth quarter before Villanova got an easy layup off a blocked 3-pointer from freshman Neleigh Gessert (who thought she got fouled). It took another 70 seconds for the Bluejays to end their drought as they misfired on their first seven shots and turned it over two more times before Zediker hit a step-back jumper.
“It seemed like it was 54-49 forever,” Flanery said. “I almost burned a timeout because I’m like, yeah, we just seem a little bit stagnant … If we could have eaten into that lead a little bit right there, then the game’s different, the pressure is different on them. I don’t know if we needed to throw it inside a little bit more, but it felt like Ava scoring the ball and Kennedy scoring the ball was about all we had in the second half.”
From there, Villanova star Jasmine Bascoe took over. Creighton had done a fantastic job of keeping her in check all game long. She was 2-for-19 from the field until Zediker’s pull-up… then she scored 14 points in the last five minutes to finish with 21 points.
Creighton turned the ball over 17 times in the game, leading to 18 Villanova points on the other end. Eleven of those turnovers were steals, giving the Wildcats plenty of transition opportunities. The Bluejays also went 0-for-10 from 3 in the second half after hitting five of their nine attempts in the first 20 minutes.
“Honestly, we probably took some quick shots in the fourth quarter, I think,” Townsend said. “We were down and trying to get back, but that’s basketball. We were hot early. I think the other thing that you’ve got to look at is points off turnovers. We didn’t take care of the ball like we probably needed to to win that game, and that’s from everybody. I just think they were ready to go tonight, as they should be. I think they can be pretty disruptive defensively. But it’s definitely our brand, we’re a 3-point shooting team, so we definitely need to make sure we’re not settling in those circumstances.”
Creighton still has one home game left on the schedule — Feb. 26 against Providence — but first the Bluejays will hit the road to visit Butler on Wednesday.
