The Creighton Bluejays overcame a 10-point deficit in the first half and seized control midway through the second on their way to a 65-55 win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Sunday night in front of 15,782 mostly Creighton-hatin’ fans at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln.
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The Bluejays improved to 7-2 on the season and dropped Nebraska to 5-2 behind the strong play of their seniors, led by point guard Austin Chatman who finished with 19 points, seven rebounds, and six assists in 36 minutes of action. As a group, Creighton’s five seniors scored 46 of the team’s 65 points, grabbed 21 of the 36 rebounds, and dished out 14 of the 15 Bluejay assists in the win.
“They’re leaders. That’s exactly what they are,” said sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden. “As an underclassman you just try to send these guys out on top. You don’t want them leaving their senior year getting beat in their last time playing [Nebraska], so we tried to send them out with four wins in four years against them.”
Zierden was held scoreless in the first half, but he bounced back in the second and scored 13 points, including a 3-pointer from the left corner with 12:26 left in the game that put Creighton ahead for good. He helped pace a balanced perimeter attack in the second half after the offense struggled to not only hit shots, but also take care of the basketball in the first half.
Nebraska forward Terran Petteway got going early on the offensive end for the Cornhuskers. When both teams were struggling to hit shots, Petteway buried three 3-pointers and knocked down a pull-up jumper off the dribble, scoring 11 points to give Nebraska a 15-7 lead with 11:38 left to play in the first half.
“He’s a guy where there is not a lot you can do,” Chatman said of Petteway’s explosive start. “He’s going to hit tough shots, but you just have to kind of live with that and try to lock everybody else up.”
For the most part Creighton did exactly that, but Nebraska’s defense continued to cause Bluejay turnovers, scoring nine points off Creighton miscues building a 24-14 lead with 5:28 left in the half. The Bluejays had cut the deficit to down to six on a corner three-pointer by senior Avery Dingman with just over eight minutes to go, but Nebraska responded with a 6-0 run to push the lead to double digits for the first time. Dingman and the Bluejays didn’t lay down at that point, though. A driving layup and a pull-up jumper by senior point guard Austin Chatman helped cut the deficit to 24-21. Then Chatman drew the defense and kicked it to the right corner to Avery Dingman for a wide open three-pointer to tie the game.
After the Huskers got a putback by Georgetown transfer Moses Abraham to retake the lead, senior forward Rick Kreklow gave Creighton their first lead of the entire game as he stepped out and drilled a three-pointer to make it 27-26 with 1:10 left in the half and cap off a 13-2 run for the Bluejays. Although they were down double digits in a hostile environment, Chatman said it was nothing the Bluejays haven’t faced before. They leaned on that experience to get back in the game and overcoming the momentum Nebraska had built with the double digit lead.
“We had been at that point before in the season, like that Oklahoma game when we were down 18,” said Chatman. “We stayed resilient, kept our composure, executed when we had to, and we got stops when we had to on the defensive end.”
Zach Hanson got things going for the Bluejays with an alley-oop dunk early in the second half (Spomer/WBR)
The Creighton lead didn’t hold in the first half as once again Petteway, just as he did in the early part of the game, gave the Huskers a lift when he buried a pull-up jumper from just inside the right wing with 3.4 seconds left on the clock. The basket gave Petteway 14 points to lead all scorers, and for Nebraska it gave them a 28-27 lead to take into the locker room at halftime.
The Huskers outscored Creighton 11-0 on points off turnovers and held a 10-0 edge in second chance points in the first half. But Creighton stayed within striking distance thanks to its defense, specifically on Nebraska forward Shavon Shields, who entered the game averaging 20.0 points per contest. By committee, the Bluejays held Shields scoreless on 0-for-4 shooting in 19 minutes of action.
Austin Chatman led Creighton in the first half with 9 points on 4-of-5 shooting to go along with four rebounds and three assists in 19 minutes.
Shields was in attack mode to start the second half, driving and dishing to Walter Pitchford to make it 30-27, then scored on drives to the basket on three of the next five Nebraska possessions to give the Huskers a 36-31 advantage with 15:01 left in the game.
With the crowd responding to Shields’ aggressive plays, the Bluejays responded the best way they knew how — letting it fly from the beyond the arc. Chatman went first from the left wing to cut it down to two. Then, Ricky Kreklow took a pass from Dingman just to the right of the top of the key and put Creighton in front momentarily, 37-36. After Nebraska retook the lead, Will Artino tied it up with an uncontested layup down low, then Zierden hit the go-ahead bomb over Nebraska guard Tai Webster to make it 42-39 with 12:26 remaining.
Those points were the first of the game for Zierden, but much to the dismay of Nebraska head coach Tim Miles, they would not be his last. After Nebraska cut the Creighton lead to 46-44 with 8:47 to go, Zierden hit a pair of free throws, then buried another one from beyond the arc to keep the Bluejays in front.
“Our whole game plan is to never let Zierden get a three off, and we give up a three, then we turn our head and lose him and give up a wide open three,” Coach Miles said. “He also missed another wide open there where the same guy guarding him didn’t get there. That’s just inexcusable.”
The Huskers would again cut the deficit down to two on a steal by Benny Parker which led to a transition dunk by Petteway. The Bluejays came up empty on the ensuing possession, but they got a stop on the other end and Zierden controlled the rebound and dumped the ball off to Chatman. The Creighton point guard got it right back to the hot hand and Zierden let it fly one more time from the left wing to make it 54-49 with 4:22 to go.
Petteway would cut it to three on a 3-pointer in front of Dingman, but Chatman froze Parker with a crossover and sank a fadeaway jumper over Pitchford to make it 58-53, Bluejays, with just 1:59 left on the game clock. The Husker would not getting any closer than that the rest of the way as Creighton knocked down 5-0f-6 at the free throw line to ice away their fourth consecutive win over their in-state rivals.
“It’s a heck of a win for us,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “To come on the road against a team as good as Nebraska and really execute our gameplan almost to perfection, the offensive rebounds weren’t part of the plan, but other than that I thought the guys really dug in defensively. They made Shields’ looks tough, and Petteway is going to take some tough shots and he’s going to make some tough shots. We were prepared to live with that.”
The Creighton benchmob was in full force on Sunday night (Spomer/WBR)
The Bluejays held the Husker’s top offensive threats, who each came in averaging at least 20 points per game, to 28 combined points on 11-for-30 shooting from the field. A team effort according to Coach Miles after he watched the Bluejays throw different players at his top guys throughout the evening. “They guarded them with five guys,” Miles said. “I thought they did a great job with team defense and really never gave them anything very easy. All the stuff Petteway got early was kind of on his own. We ran a play, but he’d make a tough shot or whatever it might be.”
Most will look at the 15 points on 5-of-6 from the three-point territory combined for Dingman and Kreklow as being a big difference in the game, but it was their contributions in other areas, specifically Dingman’s impact defensively that stood out for Coach McDermott.
“It goes without saying having Avery Dingman back to put him on Petteway and Shields with his size and understanding with what we’re doing defensively, he’s been part of those gameplans in the past,” McDermott said. “He understands how to execute them better than some of the other guys on our team, so we were naturally going to become a better defensive team when he got back in the lineup.
“But Ricky Kreklow, as I told him after the game, it was good to finally see him smile. We’ve asked him to do a lot, he was playing the back-up four for us and Avery went down right before our first game and we had to kind of fast track him at the small forward spot. So his head was spinning trying to learn everything that we were asking him to do, so tonight I just thought he played at a really good pace. He picked his spots to shoot it, picked his spots to turn shots down. When you’re coming wide in transition and you can space the floor with some of the guys we can, and you’ve got Austin with the ball in his hands it can be tough to guard sometimes.”
The win gave the Bluejays their 13 victory over Nebraska in the last 17 meetings. But for Coach McDermott, this one was important for reasons beyond just beating a rival.
“It’s always significant when you beat Nebraska, because they’re our rival and it’s the one game I think both fan bases mark on their calender,” he said. “That makes it fun. As I’ve said many times before I think it’s great that we were both NCAA Tournament teams last year and we’re off to good starts this year. I think that’s awesome for basketball in the state of Nebraska.
“But this group, I think the thing we hadn’t done yet, we beat a great Oklahoma team at home and we’d lost a couple away from home, but we hadn’t found a way to get a win against a quality opponent on the road. We needed to check that off our list, because I think there is something to having the belief that you can do it. Had we lost a close game as well as we played defensively that would’ve been a tough pill to swallow.”
Sitting at 0-11 in his career against Greg McDermott-coached teams, including now 0-3 at Nebraska, Miles was asked afterwards if the Bluejays are in his team’s heads.
“It’s hard to tell. I know they’re not in my head,” Miles said, “I really that we were going to win it. I don’t think they’re in our guys’ head. We didn’t rub our guys’ faces in it, from last year. We showed three or four clips of last year’s game and some of the stuff. But we didn’t show the first 38-8 thing or anything on them. I didn’t think it was necessary. I don’t think that’s why we lost.”
After playing four straight away from home, the Bluejays will now begin a three-game home stand on Tuesday, Dec. 9 when the welcome South Dakota to the CenturyLink Center. Tip-off between Creighton and the Coyotes is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. and the game will be televised on Fox Sports 1.