[dropcap]Junior[/dropcap] college transfer James Milliken scored 8 of his career-high 23 points in the second overtime and senior point guard Austin Chatman put the game away at the free throw line as he finished with a career-high 24 points and the Creighton men’s basketball team outlasted a gritty South Dakota bunch, 91-88, in double overtime on Tuesday night at the CenturyLink Center Omaha.
“Does anyone have a Bud Light for me?” First-year South Dakota head coach Craig Smith asked before he sat down to talk about the game. “What a game. Great game for our program. Creighton has a fantastic basketball program. They are very well-coached. They execute their game plans well. They probably got off to a little bit of a slow start.
“When you have a rivalry game like they had two days ago against University of Nebraska, when you come off an emotional win like that — and that was one heck of a win to win at the place, I’ve been a part of that, I know how hard that is to do to go at Nebraska and win — so they might have been a little sluggish to start with. Give our guys a lot of credit; they were ready to fight. They were ready to compete.”
The story of the first half was how both teams struggled offensively. The difference in the first half was, as Smith said, how South Dakota fought threw it, specifically junior guard Tre Burnette. The 6-foot-5 transfer out of Williston State College in North Dakota scorched the Bluejays for 16 points on 6-of-10 shooting and was the only player to score in double figures in the first half despite coming in averaging only 6.3 points per game through the Coyotes’ first nine games.
“They were doing a pretty good job face-guarding Brandon Bos and Tyler Larson, so I had more opportunities to score offensively,” Burnette said. “I got a lot more looks at the bucket and they were playing off me a little bit, so that helped out a lot.”
Burnette scored 11 of South Dakota’s first 15 points as the Coyotes raced out to a 15-5 lead over Creighton with just 5:48 ticked off the game clock. The Bluejays responded with a 10-2 run to cut it to 17-15 with 8:15 left in the half after Devin Brooks drove to the basket and scored from the right wing. Brooks and sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden hit key shots during the run to get the Bluejays going, but Burnette answered shortly afterwards with a personal 5-0 run to extend the lead to 24-18 late in the half.
James Milliken scores three of his game-high 23 points on Tuesday against USD. (Photo by Brad Williams for WBR)
Bluejay junior guard James Milliken hit a 3-pointer after Austin Chatman corralled an offensive rebound down low to halt Burnette’s run, but Coyotes’ leading scorer Brandon Bos connected from the downtown with just over a minute left in the opening half, and Chatman’s three-pointer to tie it rimmed out as South Dakota took a 28-25 lead into the locker room.
After halftime it was a dogfight between the Bluejays and Coyotes. The were a total of seven ties and five lead changes in the second half and overtime. Early in the second half, senior guard Devin Brooks left the game with a back injury and didn’t return. Fortunately for Creighton, Milliken was ready to step up as he did late in the first half. He gave the Bluejays their first lead since the 17:44 mark of the first half with a nice shot fake in the corner and drive to the basket to make it 36-34 with 14:40 to go.
South Dakota tied it up at 38-all shortly afterwards, but sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden passed up a good shot to get a great one, finding Milliken wide open in the left corner. The junior guard did his part, hitting nothing but net to make it 41-38, Bluejays. Once again, though, the Coyotes responded. Senior guard Tyler Larson scored down low to cut the deficit to one. Then a minute later, Brandon Bos knocked down a three-pointer to put South Dakota ahead 45-43 with 8:22 left in the second half.
Creighton didn’t trail for long thanks to Chatman and Milliken. The Bluejays senior floor general put his team back in front on three-pointer from the right wing, then Milliken swished home to pull-up jumpers from around the free throw line before Chatman added a mid-range jumper of his own to give Creighton their largest lead of the game up to that point at 52-47 with 5:32 left. The Jays extended the lead to 58-49 a couple minutes later to cap off the 15-4 run and it looked like a victory was assured at that point.
Someone forgot to mention that to Tyler Larson and the Coyotes, though, because they were far from finished. South Dakota countered Creighton’s 15-4 run with an 8-1 run of their own to get within two at 59-57 with 30 seconds left on the game clock. The Bluejays tried to seal the game at the free throw line, going 6-for-6 at the charity stripe, but Larson hit two three-pointers in the final ten seconds, including one from the right wing at the buzzer to send the game into overtime tied at 65.
Coach McDermott said after the game that he trusted his defense to get the stop, but forward Ricky Kreklow fell down on the play as he was running with Larson and that allowed the South Dakota senior guard to get a clean look at the game-tying shot. “I elected not to foul, but had I known Ricky was going to fall over I probably maybe would have fouled,” McDermott joked. “I just haven’t done it in the past, because I trust our defense.”
Milliken and Chatman got Creighton off to strong start in the first overtime when they hooked up for a three-pointer by Chatman in the left corner to put the Bluejays ahead 68-65 on the first possession of the extra time. A three-pointer by Isaiah Zierden and a pair of free throws by Ricky Kreklow made it 74-67 with 3:05 remaining, which once again, appeared to be commanding lead, but Larson hit another three-pointer to cut it to 74-70. Then Brandon Bos stole a pass from Will Artino after the Creighton center had a secured a rebound. Bos immediately went back up with the ball, scoring and drawing the foul on Artino. He hit the free throw and just like that it was a one-point game with 2:06 to go.
Chatman extended the lead to 76-73 on a layup, but Larson found reserve guard Trey Norris on the right wing for the game-tying three-pointer with 37 seconds left. It was Norris’ only three-pointer of the game and it couldn’t have come at a better time for USD. Creighton had the final shot at winning the game, but Austin Chatman’s fadeaway jumper from the right block was short off the iron and the game went to a second overtime.
After a few empty possessions by both teams, Larson knocked down two free throws to put South Dakota up 78-77 with 3:12 to go, but James Milliken and Austin Chatman weren’t finished making big plays for Creighton. Chatman assisted on three straight scores for Milliken starting with a 3-pointer from the right wing to put the Bluejays in front 80-78. Then on Milliken’s driving layup on the next possession before the duo finished off the 8-2 run on another three-pointer by Milliken to extend the lead to 85-80 with just over a minute remaining.
“He saved our bacon tonight,” McDermott said of Milliken. “With Devin going down we were done without him if [Milliken] didn’t step up.”
Milliken said after the game that his coaches and teammates remained confident in him despite his inconsistent performances this year, and that allowed him to step up when they needed him to tonight, “It started with Coach telling me to look for my shot more, because they were sagging off of me,” he said. “My teammates made the extra pass. Isaiah passed up two wide open threes just to get me one, so they trusted me to make the shots and I felt comfortable making them.”
Five of Chatman’s game-high eight assists led to scores by Milliken as they both turned in career nights. Bos and Larson made things interesting in crunch time of the second overtime period, but Chatman hit 5-of-6 at the charity stripe to ice away a 91-88 win that the team might learn more from than they did the 65-55 road win over rival Nebraska.
“Sometimes a win is a win is a win,” Coach McDermott said. “You just have to file it that way and hopefully, as I told the team, we need to be mature enough to learn from why this happened. It goes back to the start of the game. I just thought we were a little full of ourselves. I think we felt like we could just walk on the floor — we had just beaten Nebraska, everybody patted us on the back for 48 hours — and it would just happen again.
“We went from being an extremely tough, disciplined, and smart basketball team Sunday night to a team that wasn’t very tough, wasn’t very disciplined, and wasn’t very smart tonight,” he added.
Though he didn’t expect to be in that type of a game against the Coyotes, Chatman said there are positives to take away from this game with how they not only fought back from a double-digit deficit, but also responded to everything South Dakota threw at them at the end of regulation and in the overtimes.
“There are a lot of positives from this,” the Creighton point guard said. “It just shows how much our team has grown from the last couple of losses — just staying resilient down the stretch. Ricky was big. Everybody was just big tonight at different spots in the game and helped us out to come get this win.”
The Bluejays will take tomorrow off to recover, especially Devin Brooks. The senior guard left the game with a back injury and Greg McDermott said he will get treatment on it and see how he responds to it before his status is decided for Saturday’s afternoon game against Saint Mary’s.
Tip-off between the Bluejays (8-2) and Gaels (5-1) is scheduled for 1:15 p.m. and will be televised on Fox Sports 1.
Saint Mary’s will be looking to bounce back from the first loss of the season, an 82-71 setback at home against Boise State. The Bluejays will be looking to protect their 24-game home winning streak and also exact a little revenge after the Gaels beat them 74-66 in Moraga, Cali., on February 23, 2013 as part of the Bracket Busters event.
