A fast-paced, back and forth affair got the better of the Creighton Bluejays on Tuesday night as the Drake Bulldogs went on an 11-1 run over the final three and a half minutes to secure an 81-72 victory at the Knapp Center in Des Moines, Iowa.
Despite leading for most of the second half, the Jim Flanery’s Bluejays couldn’t get enough stops or make shots when they needed to the most.
“We were in a position — nine points is a little deceptive for the final margin,” Flanery said. “Our defense could have been better in stretches. Midway through the fourth quarter they had a lineup on the floor where they were resting some kids, and we needed to make a little bit of a jump there and we didn’t. I took a risk and played some kids through that; we pretty much played the same lineup through the whole fourth quarter. In hindsight that wasn’t the right thing to do, because I felt like they were the fresher team for the last four or five minutes.”
In the beginning of the game it didn’t look like the final four or five minutes were going to matter all that much as the Bulldogs stormed out of the gates with an 11-2 run in the first three minutes. Creighton senior guard Marissa Janning nailed a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to six points, but Drake pushed out to an 18-8 lead on a 3-pointer by freshman forward Sara Rhine with 3:37 left in the first quarter.
Creighton flipped the script and closed out the opening period with an 11-0 run that saw true freshman forward Audrey Faber score nine of those points herself to give the Bluejays a 19-18 lead. It was a homecoming of sorts for the Creighton newcomer, who hails from Clive, Iowa, 15 minutes outside of Des Moines. Nerves were a factor early on with so many familiar faces in the crowd there to watch her play.
“I definitely heard my family out there,” Faber said. “I was definitely really nervous in the beginning. At the beginning of the game I air-balled my first shot, but I think once the game got going and I got settled in my teammates did a good job of just getting me incorporated early, and then I just got more and more comfortable as the game kept going on.”
After misfiring on her first shot attempt, Faber nailed her next two attempts from 3-point range and converted a traditional 3-point play in the final two and half minutes of the first quarter to put her team in front. Instead of losing confidence after drawing nothing but air on her first shot, it actually might have helped her settle in.
“I was talking to [graduate assistant Carli Tritz] about that earlier this week, and she said sometimes it’s just better to make a mistake and get it out of the way. I guess it did help.”
Drake junior forward Lizzy Wendell scored on the first possession of the second quarter to retake the lead for the Bulldogs, but a jumper by Faber put the Bluejays back in front and kicked off a 10-2 run that saw them pull out to a 29-22 lead with 6:10 remaining in the first half.
They couldn’t stretch it out any further than that, however, as Drake pulled within four points before sophomore guard Maddy Dean converted layups on consecutive possessions to tie the game at 33-all with 3:18 to go in the quarter. Creighton junior guard MC McGrory answered with a 3-pointer to put her team in front 36-33, but Wendell scored inside again, and Rhine hit a layup and went 2-for-2 at the free throw line to send the Bulldogs into the locker room up by one, 39-38.
The 3-pointer late in the second quarter appeared to provide a shot of confidence for McGrory, who came out strong in the second half. On Creighton’s first possession she drove into the lane, drew a foul, and knockeddown a pair of free throws. Then a few minutes later she buried another one from beyond the arc to put the Bluejays in front 43-41 with 7:55 left in the third quarter.
“I went into halftime and thought, well I was 2-for-2, so I might as well try and get a few more looks,” McGrory said of her mindset in the second half. “If you’re shooting 100% that’s probably a problem.”
The Bluejays were still in front, 49-46, with 4:17 left in the third quarter, but despite having McGrory, Faber, Janning, and sophomore guard Sydney Lamberty on the floor at the same time they weren’t able to create any further separation heading into the final period. Instead they needed two consecutive 3-pointers from Faber and sophomore guard Jade Owens, and a driving layup off the glass by Janning just to take a 59-56 lead prior to the start of the fourth quarter.
“I think that was big,” Creighton’s coach said of his team’s inability to build on the lead with that lineup in the game. “In a lot of ways I felt like if we busted it from five to nine or ten, now we’re in a position where we can kind of control the rest of the game and we didn’t. To Drake’s credit they hung in there.”
Though they were starting to wear down, the Bluejays still had some bite left in them to start the final period. After Drake pulled within one, McGrory knocked down another 3-pointer to push Creighton out to a 64-60 lead. She later found junior guard Lauren Works on the wing for another 3-pointer to make it 67-62, then another driving layup by Janning made it 69-64 with 5:51 remaining. That’s when it started coming unglued as Drake brought most of their top players back into the game, and scored 17 of the final 20 points to pull away.
Buckets down low on three straight possessions gave the Bulldogs a 70-69 lead with 3:48 to play. After Faber put Creighton up 72-71 with 1:45 left, Dean hit a layup and the Bluejays couldn’t answer. Then junior guard Caitlin Ingle buried a huge 3-pointer with the shot clock winding to give Drake a 76-72 lead with 42.9 seconds remaining. They finished the game out at the free throw line to get the nine-point win and improve to 4-0 on the season, dropping Creighton to 2-1.
“Ingle hits the big three when it was a one-point game late in the shot clock. That really obviously was a dagger,” Flanery said. “Offensively we were fine, we got good shots. We need to better defensively. We got the ball driven down our throat.”
Drake obliterated the Bluejays in the paint, outscoring them 52-16. Most of what did offensively, especially in the second half, came on drives into the lane where the either converted layups or got to the free throw line.
“We worked on it all week,” Flanery said of how the Bluejays prepared to defend Drake’s dribble drive attack. “We just said use your help. If there is somebody that’s close you can have them use you, but we got beat away from help a lot. That’s a big thing with us is we want if there is somebody ten feet away then you’re supposed to push the ball to where your help is and we didn’t do a good job of that.”
The bright spots for the Bluejays were McGrory and Faber with the way they helped the team in multiple areas. McGrory played 27 minutes and finished with a season-high 15 points while also pulling down a career-high nine rebounds to go along with three assists and no turnovers. Faber, in just the third game of her collegiate career, dropped in season-highs of 19 points and six rebounds in 28 minutes of action, and with junior center Brianna Rollerson expected to miss six weeks while recovering from a broken foot, the Bluejays are going to need performances like that on the glass to help pick up the slack during her absence.
“They were both really good,” Flanery said. “MC I thought took one shot kind of out of rhythm in the first half and it went in, but every shot she took looked good. She drove it into the paint a couple times, I thought she played really well.”
“Audrey just continues to be solid in a lot of areas. She went and got us some rebounds. We just have to get a little bit more out of some other people, but I think Audrey through three games has probably been our best player. She’s impacted each game in quite a few ways.”
Next up for the Bluejays will be three games over the next four days at the Lone Star Showcase in Austin, Texas. The team will flight leave at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning and the opposition they’ll face will bring a combined record of 11-1 into the tournament. First up will be East Carolina on Thanksgiving Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. (CST). The Pirates are 5-0 and receiving votes in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll. Creighton’s second game will come against the 19th-ranked Northwestern Wildcats who are holding opponents to 49.0 points per game thus far. Tip-off between the Bluejays and Wildcats is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. (CST) on Friday night. Creighton will wrap up the the Eagles of Eastern Washington, who have just one setback this season — a 78-56 loss at Gonzaga on November 19th. That final game will tip off at 5:00 p.m. (CST).
While there won’t be much time to prepare from a scouting standpoint, MC McGrory believes the coaching staff will be ready with a plan in place for each opponent they’ll see over the course of the three-day event.
“For the scout I have no idea, we haven’t looked at them at all, but the coaches obviously have been looking at these guys all summer,” she said. “They’ve been doing their job, and I’m sure they’ll have ten things that we just have to focus on, and if we can stick to those things I think they’ll give us a chance to win.”
Listen to postgame interviews with Jim Flanery, MC McGrory and Audrey Faber
