Creighton knew what it was facing when it drew Bruce Weber’s hard-nosed Kansas State squad as a first round opponent, but even some extra rest after the Big East Tournament and more time to prepare, the Bluejays still fell flat in the first round for the second consecutive season, falling to the 9-seed Wildcats, 69-59, in Charlotte on Saturday night.
Playing short-handed without the services of arguably their best player in junior forward Dean Wade, Kansas State got a big lift early from point guard Kamau Stokes, who looked to be fully recovered from a foot injury that sidelined him for a month in the middle of the season. Stokes scored the first seven points of the game, including two deep 3-pointers to help the Wildcats put Creighton in a 10-2 hole with 15:45 left in the first half.
“Seeing the ball go in, it felt really good,” Stokes said. “It all came down to focusing on making a shot, and like I said, seeing the ball go through the hoop felt really good.”
Ronnie Harrell, Jr. came off the bench after the first media timeout and provided a much-needed spark for the Jays. The junior forward drove to the rim and scored, then penetrated the defense and got the ball moving inside-out for a 3-ball by sophomore point guard Davion Mintz to cut the deficit to 15-9 with 11:27 remaining before halftime.
The Wildcats extended the lead to 20-12 as Creighton continued to struggle from the field to the tune of 24% shooting, including a 2-for-11 clip from the 3-point line.
The story didn’t change for the rest of the half, but for as much as the Wildcats were able to prove time and again to be the tougher team on both ends of the floor with timely contests on defense and heroic late-shot clock plays on offense, they weren’t able to put a ton of separation between themselves and the Bluejays. A slip screen and a bomb in the final seconds by Mitch Ballock drew Creighton within three, but Mike McGuirl answered with a deep 3-pointer at the buzzer, then a holster of the “sidearms” to send Kansas State to the locker room with a 32-26 lead.
Khyri Thomas, the two-time reigning Big East Defensive Player of the Year, was his typical self on that end of the floor — coming up with three steals on top of a handful of deflections — but Kansas State’s Barry Brown, Jr. managed to turn in the most impressive lockdown performance of the opening half by holding Creighton’s leading scorer Marcus Foster to 0 points on 0-for-4 shooting with a couple turnovers to boot in 17 minutes.
The Jays were led in scoring by North Carolina native Davion Mintz, who dropped eight points on 3-of-6 shooting to lead all players at the break. He and senior Toby Hegner combined for 15 points on 6-of-12 shooting while the rest of the team was 5-for-20 from the field, including 1-for-10 from beyond the arc.
Kansas State extended the lead to 37-28 to open the second stanza, but Ballock carried over the momentum from his late three in the final seconds of the first by scoring seven of Creighton’s nine points to start the half. A layup in transition by Khyri Thomas capped off Ballock’s scoring run to cut the deficit to 37-35 and force a timeout by the Wildcats with 16:06 to play.
Unfortunately for the Creighton’s hopes at an extended stay in Charlotte, that was as close as they would get in this one. Each time the Jays started to apply pressure to Kansas State’s lead, the Wildcats would respond with a big shot or a big run to stem the tide.
Creighton just couldn’t overcome a 40-minute long shooting drought and the body blows finally added up in the end when they cut the deficit to nine with 6:08 to play then proceeded to go scoreless for the next four minutes as the Wildcats salted away a 69-59 win to move on to the Round of 32 and end CU’s season at 21-12.
“I thought Kansas State played a heck of a game and defensively were very disruptive early in the game,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “I thought they forced us into some uncharacteristic decisions. Rather than maybe using the pressure against them, we probably fell into the trap of trying to beat it too early in the possession and probably didn’t get as good of shots as we’d like, especially early in the game.
“I really felt like defensively we did what we needed to do to be in a good position. We just weren’t very good offensively and K-State certainly had a lot to do with that.”
The Bluejays shot 33.8% from the field for the game, their lowest field goal percentage since a 50-48 home loss to Providence on January 12, 2016 in which they converted at a 25.8% clip. The Wildcats held Creighton’s top two scorers Marcus Foster and Khyri Thomas to 14 total points on 6-for-20 shooting. Freshman guard Mitch Ballock finished with 16 points and eight rebounds to lead the Bluejays in both categories, while Toby Hegner chipped in 12 points and seven boards in the final game of his Creighton career.
