The Creighton women’s basketball team got a big contribution from junior Sarah Nelson, a vintage performance from fellow junior Carli Tritz, and a seemingly endless amount of clutch plays from a host of different people as they outlasted the visiting Evansville Purple Aces 70-67 in overtime at D.J. Sokol Arena in Omaha.
Despite being short-handed entering the game Evansville jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the opening minutes of the first half. Sarah Nelson and the Bluejays quickly responded. First, it was Nelson finding a slashing Marissa Janning for a layup. Shortly after that, Nelson scored down low despite being double-teamed. Later she hit a three from the top of the key to give Creighton a 10-7 lead with 14:56 remaining in the first half.
Evansville answered back taking a 15-12 lead on a three-pointer by senior Chelsea Falkenstein. Creighton settled for threes in hopes of shooting Evansville out of their zone defense. Unfortunately for the Jays they hit on only four of their 20 attempts from behind the arc in the first half as they played catch-up the rest of the half. With three second remaining in the opening half, Creighton junior McKenzie Fujan chased down a missed three by Marissa Janning and kissed a fadeaway jumper off the glass as the buzzer sounded to bring the Jays within two at 26-24 at halftime. Fujan scored seven points on 3-for-6 shooting in the first half. Junior Sarah Nelson led Creighton with nine points and seven rebounds as they headed to the locker room.
Evansville still led 33-32 with 15:05 left when Tritz made the first of many clutch plays by intercepting a pass at midcourt and racing down for the go ahead layup. The Purple Aces responded by scoring 11 of the next 13 points over a four-minute stretch that saw them take a 44-36 lead over the Bluejays with 11:07 remaining in the second half. Tritz, Nelson, and Fujan then scored eight unanswered for the Jays to tie it at 44 just two minutes later, but Evansville again answered on a three by freshman Laura Friday. For most of the evening it appeared the banged up Aces had an answer for everything Creighton could throw at them.
Trailing 48-46, Nelson got one of her team-high six assists when she found Tritz open in the corner for the go ahead three with 4:52 left in the second half. Tritz, a junior from Sioux City, Iowa, has struggled most of the season thanks to constant pain in her knee, but she scored all ten of her points in the second half and made the big plays when her team needed it the most. “This reminded me of the Minnesota game. You get so tired and it’s somewhat of an adrenaline rush,” said Tritz. “It has to be for me, because I feel terrible right now, but five minutes ago I was fine, bouncing around, the crowd was going crazy, and I didn’t feel the knee as much.”
Evansville wasn’t ready to give up after Tritz’ latest big play as they got another answer from senior Samantha Heck on the following possession when she scored two of her game-high 21 points to retake the lead. Two free throws by Janning and a three by Nelson gave the Creighton its largest lead of the game at 54-50 with 3:03 to go. Evansville scored the next four points to tie it with a minute to go. Then with 32 seconds left, Creighton freshman phenom Marissa Janning hit one of the biggest shots of her young career. Evansville left the youngster from Watertown, Minnesota open on the wing and after a brief hesitation she made them pay by knocking down the long-range shot and putting Creighton in front 57-54. Prior to that shot, Janning was 0-for-7 from behind the arc in the game. “I wanted to shoot, but I wanted to see if anybody else was open,” said Janning. “Carli had just hit a couple, Ally had hit a couple, but I shot it, and it went in when we needed it.”
Evansville still had some fight left, however, as Samantha Heck hit a step-back three in front of Fujan to tie the game again with 13 seconds left. Nelson, who finished with 20 points, 11 rebounds and six assists, missed a game-winning three and the game headed to overtime. “This was one of the top three games that we’ve played since I’ve been coaching here,” said Evansville coach Oties Epps.
The game only got more exciting in the overtime period. After giving up a layup to Nelson, the Purple Aces went on an 8-0 run to take a 65-59 lead with 2:43 to go in the extra period. Sensing the game slipping away, Tritz quickly found sophomore Alexis Akin-Otiko down low to cut it to four. Tritz then stripped the ball from Evansville senior Meagan Collins, passed it ahead to Janning who drilled a three to cut the Purple Aces’ lead to 65-64 with 2:09 remaining. After a layup by Purple Aces senior Taylor Ware, Tritz again made the right play against Evansville’s aggressive zone defense, finding senior Ally Jensen on the right wing for three to tie the game at 67 with just over a minute to go. After another turnover by Collins, Creighton’s Nelson hit the shot of the game with a three from the left wing to put the Bluejays up 70-67 with 43 seconds left in overtime. Evansville’s Chelsea Falkenstein hit Nelson right in the chest with an errant pass on the ensuing possession and Creighton sealed the memorable win with two free throws apiece from Ally Jensen and Marissa Janning.
After the game, Jensen, a senior guard out of Ames, Iowa, talked about how her team was able to keep fighting to the finish. “It’s a credit to our fight and our toughness. We didn’t have any right winning that game, but we believed and everyone just kept shooting. Obviously I missed a ridiculous amount of shots in a row, but [Coach Flanery] basically said if ‘you’re going to play, we need you to shoot’. I wasn’t happy with the misses before but you have to keep shooting and it feels good when it goes in.”
The win over Evansville sets up a championship stage for Creighton as they welcome the Southern Illinois Salukis to town on Saturday afternoon. A win over the Salukis will clinch at least a share of the Missouri Valley Conference regular season title for the Bluejays, something the school hasn’t done since Jim Flanery’s first year as Creighton’s head coach back in 2002-03. “We’ve got work to do, because anyone who has seen these last two games knows we were fortunate to win both of them,” said coach Flanery after the game. “I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but this a great group and they’re a lot of fun to coach. I think today was an example of a team that was resilient and battled and played together to come away with the win. These are the types of games that you have to go through to win a conference championship.”
After the game, Sarah Nelson agreed that the Jays shouldn’t think anything is guaranteed on Saturday. “It’ll be a great feeling to win the regular season, but we still have one more game. Like Evansville just proved to us, you have to play it. Every game is a game. Hopefully we’ll finish it and it’ll be a great feeling once it’s over.”
Creighton’s Carli Tritz, who was the MVP of the conference tournament last season, talked about what’s at stake when the Salukis come to town. “We’ve worked hard to put ourselves in this position. We deserve to be here, and Southern Illinois may be struggling, but so was Evansville and so was Drake. Everyone’s going to give us their best shot and we know that. Now we are one win away. It’s not like we can go out there and try not to lose, we have to go out there and win it. We have to go win the game.”
The Jays and Salukis are set to tip-off at 2:05 p.m. on Saturday afternoon from D.J. Sokol Arena. It will be the swan song for Creighton’s two seniors, Ally Jensen and Jasmin Corbin.
Game Stats:
Evansville / Creighton
Score: 69 / 74
FG/FGA/FG%: 24-43 (55.8%) / 26-71 (36.6%)
3FG/3FGA/3FG%: 10-18 (55.6%) / 13-44 (29.5%)
FT/FTA/FT%: 11-14 (78.6%) / 9-10 (90%)
Rebounding: 35 (Off: 7, Def: 28) / 32 (Off: 18, Def: 14)
Assists: 17 / 21
Turnovers: 24 / 11
Steals: 4 / 10
Blocks: 0 / 2
Scoring Leaders: Heck (21) / Nelson (20)
Rebounding Leaders: Heck (13) / Nelson (11)
Assists Leaders: Heck (6) / Nelson (6)
Steals Leaders: Ware (2) / Janning (3)
Blocks Leaders: None / Fujan, Nelson (1)