Marcus Zegarowski’s reaction spoke louder and more clearly than any postgame comments he could have made after Creighton’s 73-72 loss at Kansas on Tuesday night. With what felt like the entire college basketball world watching in anticipation of an epic finish between two top 10 teams, the All-American point guard stepped to the free throw line for three shots with his team trailing 73-70 with 1.1 seconds left on the clock. After Kansas head coach Bill Self tried to ice him with an influx of substitutions casually walking over to the line up on the block, Zegarowski stepped to the charity stripe and hit the first. Then the second. With the ball back in his hands, he took one more deep breath, and let the third one go — it was long, and as the rebound was deflected and on its way out of bounds, Zegarowski pulled his jersey over his face.
He didn’t talk to reporters after the game or send out a post on Twitter and Instagram, and he didn’t need to. When he tried to crawl into his jersey in that moment his actions said it all.
“Marcus is a perfectionist, so he’s crushed,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said after the game. “I told him that I can’t feel bad because I know the work that he’s put in to prepare himself for that moment. Sometimes you prepare and you prepare and you do everything you can and it still doesn’t work out the way you want it to. He’s put in the time, he’s put in the effort to be confident in that situation. Unfortunately the last one rimmed out.”
That was the story of the game for the eighth-ranked Bluejays, who fell to 3-1 on the season while Kansas improved to 5-1 with the win. They got over the hump on three different occasions in the second half, but they only maintained the lead for a total of two minutes and 25 seconds of game time. Creighton erased an eight-point deficit midway through the second half and a five-point deficit in the final 1:38, but each time Kansas was able to land a counterpunch and regain the edge.
“It was a hell of a college basketball game,” McDermott said. “It was kind of unfortunate that somebody had to lose, and really unfortunate that it was us. I’m really proud of our team. I thought we competed. Kansas shot the ball a little better than they’ve been shooting the basketball, and we did not shoot as well as I think we are capable of, and certainly our free throw issues in the second half for a team that was shooting [83.3%] on the year, that kind of went through our team. We missed a bunch of those and it ended up being the difference in the game.
“I thought execution-wise late-game for not being in this position before, I thought we executed some stuff really well against a really good defensive team.”
Kansas showed its teeth defensively from the outset, turning a live-ball turnover into a transition layup, but for the most part Creighton settled into pretty quickly on offense. Junior five-man Christian Bishop connected with Zegarowski on a lob to the rim, then knocked down the second 3-pointer of his career — and first since November 22nd of last year — coming in as the trail man in transition three possessions later.
Bishop’s activity on both ends of the floor help set the tone for CU in the first three minutes as they pulled ahead early and the homecoming kid, Mitch Ballock, drilled two threes in less than 90 seconds to extend the advantage to 14-8 and force Kansas to burn a timeout instead of waiting for a stoppage in play to send the game to the first commercial break.
The Jayhawks responded with a 13-2 run over the next 3:04 that featured a steady diet of their inside-outside capabilities. Big man David McCormack got to the free throw line and finished inside, and Christian Braun, Jalen Wilson, and Marcus Garrett all added makes from 3-point territory to put KU in front 21-16 with 12:15 left in the first half.
Creighton regained the lead at three different junctures before halftime, two of which came on shots by senior guard Denzel Mahoney, but Kansas was in too much of a groove playing through McCormack and Wilson. They finished the opening stanza on a 10-4 run to head into the locker room with a 39-35 lead. Bishop was the tip of the spear for the Jays in the first half, producing nine points on 4-of-4 shooting to go along with four rebounds and two blocked shots in 12 minutes, but Wilson and McCormack each finished the half in double figures for KU, combining to score 25 points on 67% shooting from the floor.
Greg McDermott’s first counter to reducing the effectiveness of Kansas’ big man was evident on a couple of possessions early in the second half when they put Marcus Zegarowski in ball screens with Bishop to force McCormack to either give up the three or the lob. He chose the three both times, and Zegarowski stuck both of them to give the Jays a 41-40 lead. The second three was the first of six lead changes between the two clubs in the opening five-plus minutes of the second half.
As they did in the first half, Kansas seized control with a 13-2 run — capped off by an off-balance three by Braun, which he banked in from the left corner over the outstretched hands of Shereef Mitchell and Christian Bishop to beat the shot clock — that gave them a 58-50 cushion with 11:03 to go.
The Jays chipped away at the deficit to draw even once again at 59-all four minutes later, but KU was able to build a little more separation behind some clutch shooting underclassmen guards in Braun and freshman Bryce Thompson. Ordinarily that might be the dagger, but in this battle of Final Four hopefuls it was only the setup to the dramatic finish.
Enter Denzel Mahoney.
Turns out the fifth-year senior had a few more big shots left in the tank from earlier in the half and he decided not to include them as carry-on items for the trip back to Omaha. To kick off a string of seven straight points, he got Braun off his feet with a shot fake, then spun around to nail a fall-away jumper that pulled Creighton within three, at 68-65, with 2:03 to play. After a layup on the other end by Marcus Garrett stretched the lead back to five, Mahoney came off a screen by Bishop, caught a pass from Zegarowski on the right wing, and rose up over a late-arriving Jalen Wilson to bury a 3 that cut KU’s lead to two with 1:24 left. On the ensuing defensive possession, Mahoney and Bishop trapped a dribble-handoff to Thompson at the top of the key. As Thompson pivoted to find McCormack open in the pain, Mahoney stripped the ball from him and took it down court for the finish to make it 70-70 with 1:06 on the clock.
After a timeout, Kansas ran the same action from the opposite wing and Creighton once again blitzed the ball screen. Only this time, McCormack set a better screen and knocked Mahoney off his feet momentarily. Thompson fed the big man on the slip, who then swung it to the Wilson on the opposite wing for a rhythm three that eventually held up as the game-winner.
Mahoney led four Bluejays in double figures with 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting while also adding five rebounds, three steals, and two assists in 34 minutes, but Wilson’s production was just too much for Creighton to overcome in the end. The 6-foot-8 redshirt freshman shot a career-best 4-of-6 from 3-point range and tied his season-high with 23 points in the win.
“He was really good,” McDermott said. “He hit some huge threes and got a couple offensive rebounds that were killers. I thought we settled in and did a better job on McCormack in the second half, but Wilson and Braun really hit some big shots … it’s a good basketball team. There is a reason they are ranked fifth in the country.”
Now after being dealt some on-court adversity, the Jays have to turn the page as quickly as possible to get ready for a much-improved Nebraska team that is scheduled to be in town on Friday evening in the final game before Big East play gets underway on December 14th.
“I hope we are mature enough to handle it,” McDermott said of what the experience of this loss means for his team. “I’m a firm believer that you learn when you win and you learn when you lose, and then you wipe it and you move on to the next game. That’s going to be our challenge because our guys are hurting. We had some guys miss some free throws in that second half — not just Marcus — we had several guys miss some free throws who normally are good foul shooters, so that’s going to weigh on their minds throughout the night and into tomorrow, but Nebraska isn’t going to feel sorry for us because we came up a little short. We’ve got to hit that practice floor tomorrow ready to prepare.”
Tip-off between the Bluejays and Huskers is set for 6:00 p.m. on Big Ten Network.
