The Creighton Bluejays learned a little bit about the stuff they have inside as they erased an 18-point, second-half deficit to take down the 18th-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, 65-63, in front of a rowdy crowd of 17,393 at the CenturyLink Center Omaha on Wednesday night.
“I think it goes without saying that our crowd, they wouldn’t let us quit. They wouldn’t let us die,” head coach Greg McDermott said.
To start the game Oklahoma guard Buddy Hield put seven points on the board before some some in that sellout crowd even found their seats. Sooner forward Ryan Spangler buried a wide open corner three-pointer to put OU ahead 10-2 at the first media timeout with 15:51 left in the first half as the Oklahoma defense forced Creighton to miss their first seven shots from the field before Austin Chatman broke out in transition and fed Rick Kreklow for a layup to bring the Bluejays to within four points of the Sooners with 14:40 left.
The Bluejays free throw shooting kept them in the game while the shooting percentages from the field continued to plummet. Then, Austin Chatman knocked down a three-pointer with 7:30 left in the half to cut the Oklahoma lead down to 23-18 as the crowd tried to push the Jays through their early struggles. The momentum swung back in Oklahoma’s favor after a charge call on Kreklow went against the Bluejays just before the final media timeout.
The Sooners made it count out of the break with a three-pointer by Dinjiyl Walker to extend the lead to 28-18. The Sooners pushed the lead to as high as 13 a couple of times towards the end of the half before settling on a 35-24 halftime lead.
Creighton finished the period with just six made field goals on 25 attempts, including 2-of-14 from beyond the arc.
The second half began exactly as the first, with the Sooners throwing the first punch and going on a 7-0 run to open up their largest lead of the game at 42-24 after only 1:30 had ticked off the clock. With the crowd silenced and the Bluejay players shell-shocked, McDermott called a timeout and told his team that it wasn’t going to end like this.
“He said we’re not this team who just gets blown out,” said sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden, who made his first career start in tonight’s game. “I think we found ourselves and got back to getting a stop on defense and running in transition.”
“We had a defeated look on our face,” McDermott said of what he saw when he looked around the huddle. “The timeout wasn’t about X’s and O’s. It was about who we want to be.”
Isaiah Zierden hit a three-pointer to complete a 24-4 rally in the 2nd half to give the Jays their first lead. The reaction from the bench (Brad Williams /WBR) $ CLICK to BUY $
The Bluejays decided they wanted to be fighters. Toby Hegner, Zierden, and senior point guard Austin Chatman proceeded to hit three-pointers on three of Creighton’s next four possessions to cut the Sooners’ lead to 44-33 with 16:32 to go. One possession at a time the Jays kept going. Stop, score, stop, score, stop, score until Isaiah Zierden put Creighton in front for the first time with a corner three that sent the crowd to their feet and capped off a 24-4 run, giving the Bluejays a 48-46 lead with 11:35 left in the game.
Though they had surrendered the momentum, the 18th-ranked Sooners were not yet ready to surrender the game. Buddy Hield answered with a three-pointer to put Oklahoma back in front 51-50. Zierden again connected from beyond the arc to make it 53-51, Creighton, but Hield knocked down another trey to make it 54-53 with just under ten minutes remaining.
Four minutes later, with the score knotted at 57, Hield hit a baseline mid-range jumper to put the Sooners ahead. Then, Houston transfer TaShawn Thomas hit a pair of free throws to make it 61-57 with 3:37 left. Due in large part to sophomore center Zach Hanson, the Bluejays would make sure that Oklahoma would not score again from the field.
Hanson brought Creighton within two by laying in a nice dime dropped off by senior guard Devin Brooks. A minute later Brooks would tie it at 61-all with an aggressive drive to the basket. Then after steals by Hanson and Zierden on consecutive defensive possessions, Brooks drove baseline and lofted the ball way over the rim. Fortunately, or intentionally depending on who you ask, Hanson was their to control the rebound (or pass) and tip it in to put the Bluejays ahead 63-61 with only 49 seconds to go.
“Dev said it was a pass, so it’s gotta be a pass,” Hanson said. “I thought it looked like a shot, but he said it was a pass so it all worked out.”
Zierden said he’ll give Brooks the benefit of the doubt even though the official result was an offensive rebound tipped in by Hanson. “At first I … I’ll stick up for Dev, I’ll say it was [a pass], because you know he saw the guy coming and Zach was wide open by himself. I’ll credit it with a pass, but Zach did a great job of finishing there.”
Down the stretch to regain the lead, Hanson came up with some big plays on both ends of the floor. Something that didn’t come as a surprise to his teammates, even if it may have surprised some of the fans.
“It’s the Zach that I think everybody out there has been waiting to see, but I think we as a team know that’s who Zach is,” said Zierden. “He doesn’t always have that out in the game, because he doesn’t get situations like this, but I think he really showed who he was tonight.”
After a missed three by Sooner guard Jordan Woodard, the rebound was grabbed by Chatman who was immediately fouled. The Bluejay senior leader stepped to the line and hit a pair of pressure free throws to make it 65-61 with 24.2 seconds left.
The Sooners cut the lead in half with a two free throws by Isaiah Cousins. Then an empty trip to put the game away with four seconds left by the Bluejays gave Oklahoma a chance to tie or win, but Woodard once again came up short on a contested three-pointer from the right corner and the comeback and Top 25 upset were complete as Creighton improved to 3-0 with the 65-63 victory.
“Tonight a team came in here that knew who they were and they punched us right in the mouth,” said Greg McDermott. “We didn’t quite know how to respond. In the second half there was a team that found itself. Our defense in the second half was going to look totally different on tape compared to the first half. Our execution, our energy, our willingness to have each other’s back and help each other when a teammate made a mistake. That’s what it’s going to take for this team to be successful. Obviously we didn’t shoot it well the first half. I think Oklahoma had a lot to do with that. I thought we took some challenged shots and our message in the timeout was let’s wait for a great one. Let’s turn down the good ones and try to get a great one. And we beat a heck of a basketball team.”
Chatman Carries Bluejays
Austin Chatman was the senior leader in action for the Jays on Wednesday night (Mike Spomer / WBR) $ CLICK to BUY $
In victory, Creighton’s senior point guard had what might go down as the best game of his career and the Bluejays needed every bit of his contribution. Chatman finished with 17 points, a career-high 11 rebounds, and dished out six assists while only turning the ball over one time in 38 minutes on the floor.
He also hit what would eventually prove to be the game-winning free throws with 24.2 seconds left after rebounding a missed three-pointer by Oklahoma.
“And I told Austin on the way over I’ve been doing this 26 years and I’m not sure I’ve had a player switch his fortunes in the middle of the game quite like Austin did tonight,” McDermott said. “He struggled shooting it early. He was our leader defensively. He and I had a conversation after our last game about how important he is to our team. Take away scoring, take away all that, he has to be our rock. He has to be the guy that everybody is turning to in the huddle, and his performance whether it be good or bad can’t impact his ability to do that.”
True to his head coach’s words and despite starting the game 1-for-7 from the field as his team fall behind by 18 points early in the second half, Chatman picked up his individual play and his teammates before the Bluejays started cutting into the Oklahoma lead.
“I think everybody was down. Everybody was defeated, a lot of guys lost their composure,” Chatman said. “Then Mac talked to us in the huddle, everybody’s face just looked like we had the life sucked out of us. Then I spoke to the guys and told them it wasn’t over. We had to do it for these fans and that’s what we did.”
Though the shots started to fall and the crowd began to impact the opponent, Hegner came back to Chatman’s leadership as the spark that change the course of the game for Creighton.
“It came from Austin,” Hegner said. “Austin got us all together and he brought us all together and said, ‘Hey, it’s our time. We’re down 18 we gotta start chipping at the lead.’ And it eventually happened and we came out with the win.”
After the game Chatman, a senior who has now won 87 games in three-plus seasons, said of all the wins he’s been a part of this one stands out for him. “For me, personally, I feel like this is one of the biggest wins that I’ve had in CenturyLink. Everybody just kind of got on my back and we did it together as a team.”
Culture Wins
Tradition never graduates
— Grant Gibbs (@DoubleGfor3) November 20, 2014
Once Chatman secured Woodard’s last-second three-pointer to seal the victory, former Bluejay guard Grant Gibbs tweeted “Tradition never graduates.” It was a tip of the cap from a former player to both the future and the past participants that helped build the foundation of the Creighton Basketball program. A program that according to Greg McDermott has a culture in place that makes 18-point comeback wins over top 25 teams possible.
“I think to a certain extent the guys that have been in the program have learned how to win and what it takes,” McDermott said as he addressed the sentiment of his former player. “The way we played the first half is not what it takes. In the second half that never-say-die attitude where we continued to defend and continued to execute and continued to be who we are regardless of whether shots are going or not allowed us to come back and get this win. But you know, culture wins. We’ve talked about it a long time and I’m a big believer in it.”
Now off to a 3-0 start for the fifth consecutive time since Greg McDermott arrived on campus, a mark not many were confident this current group could get to given the challenge the Sooners presented, the Bluejays will next host North Carolina Central on Sunday, Nov. 23 at 3:00 p.m. from the CenturyLink Center. The game will once again be televised nationally on Fox Sports 1 as the Bluejays look to improve to 4-0 for the fourth consecutive season.
Photo Gallery
See the photos from WBR photographers Mike Spomer and Brad Williams of the game Wednesday night. Head over to photos.whiteandbluereview.com to get your favorites.