After falling behind by as many as 18 points, the Creighton women’s basketball team rallied late before ultimately coming up short in a 60-57 loss to 12th-ranked Nebraska in front of a mixed red and blue crowd of 1,411 at D.J. Sokol Arena on Thursday night.
Senior forward Alexis Akin-Otiko scored 20 of her career-high 23 points in the second half to lead a furious rally by the Bluejays, but Nebraska senior forward Halie Sample hit three of four at the free throw line in the final 14 seconds for her only points of the second half and Creighton freshman guard Sydney Lamberty missed a game-tying three-pointer just before the final buzzer as the Cornhuskers escaped with their second straight win over the in-state rival Bluejays.
“That’s kind of the standard when you play Creighton,” Nebraska head coach Connie Yori said after the game. “I used to say the first one to 50 wins, but today it was the first one to 60.”
Nebraska was able to take command early thanks to a strong start by junior guard Rachel Theriot, who took over from the opening tip. The 6-foot guard from Ohio scored or assisted on eight of the Husker’s first nine field goals as the visitors raced out to a 20-8 lead midway through the opening half. Theriot came in averaging a team-best 4.5 assists per game, but she had five by the end of Nebraska’s hot start to the game.
“Of course it’s great to get a good start when you come into this building,” Coach Yori said. “Rachel’s really good. She’s a little deceptive and she’s a little quicker than you think. She can get her shot off over a lot of people.”
With her team trailing by 12 after Theriot’s big stretch, sophomore point guard MC McGrory cut Creighton’s deficit to single digits momentarily with a three-pointer from the right wing. But Nebraska outscored the Bluejays 9-0 over the next five minutes to build their largest lead of the game at 29-11 with 3:55 left in the first half.
Creighton started chipping away shortly after as Sydney Lamberty connected from the top of the key and senior forward Alexis Akin-Otiko followed up with a three-pointer of her own from the right wing to allow the Bluejays to hang around, but Nebraska rode their hot shooting into the locker room at halftime with a 33-17 lead.
In the first half, Nebraska shot 14-of-22 from the floor, good for a 63.6% mark while holding the Bluejays to 7-for-30 (23.3%) on the other end.
A big key to 16-point halftime lead was Nebraska’s defense on Creighton’s top two players Akin-Otiko and reigning Big East player of the Year Marissa Janning. For almost the first 18 minutes, the Huskers held the duo scoreless on 0-for-7 shooting between them. Coach Yori singled out senior guard Tear’a Laudermill for the job she did containing Janning, who entered the night averaging 16.4 points per game.
“We chased her around and we had some different kids on her. Mainly, T. Laudermill guarded her, but Brandi Jeffrey guarded her some, Halie Sample guarded her some, but [Laudermill] did the majority of it,” Coach Yori said. “You just don’t want to give her anything, and you also want to squeeze her off when she starts putting the ball on the floor. You want to have somebody right there to provide some help, so you can be tight on her on the catch, play her left hand, and squeeze her when you can. You utilize as much help as you can off the kids that you can afford to help off of.”
The second half proved to be a different story for Creighton on the offensive end, especially for Akin-Otiko. She scored 11 of her team’s first 15 points after halftime, including a trio of rainbows from beyond the arc to engineer a 15-6 run that cut the Nebraska lead down to 39-32 with 13:13 remaining.
“I don’t think it was an individual thing. I just know that Flan tried to pump us up at half,” Akin-Otiko said of the team’s start to the second half. “He told us that we could do it. We just needed to work on ball movement and I was just lucky enough to get open from my teammates moving around. Moving the ball more helped everybody.”
The Nebraska defense responded to the run by holding the Bluejays to just a single free throw over the next five minutes and change as they pushed the lead back to double digits at 47-33 with 8:16 left in the second half.
Again, though, it was Akin-Otiko providing a spark for Creighton. With 7:46 remaining, she connected on another three-pointer, this one from the left wing to cut the deficit to 47-36. That jump-started a stretch where Creighton scored on five of six possessions to trim the 14-point lead in half with 4:39 remaining.
The Bluejays and Huskers traded scores for the next couple of minutes before Akin-Otiko sank her 6th three-pointer of the game, this time from the top of the key to bring Creighton to within four points at 57-53 with 1:53 to play. After an offensive foul on Marissa Janning negated a layup that would have made it a two-point game, the Bluejays put another stop together and Akin-Otiko scored after beating her defender to the basket from the right wing. That cut it to 57-55 with 33 seconds left and the Bluejays, forced to foul with the shot clock off, sent Halie Sample to the line with 14 seconds left.
Sample hit both free throws to make it a four-point game, but MC McGrory quickly drove down and scored to make it 59-57 with 10 seconds remaining. Once again Creighton sent Sample to the free throw line, but this time she missed the second one, giving Creighton one final chance to tie the game. However, Sydney Lamberty’s three-pointer from just left of the top of the key was off the rim to the right and the Bluejays’ comeback bid ended up one possession short.
Despite outscoring Nebraska, 40-27, in the second half, Creighton head coach Jim Flanery was left wondering “what if?” after the final buzzer sounded. “I told a few people I need to start giving my halftime speech in the pre-game,” he said after watching his Bluejays fall behind by double digits in the first half for the fourth straight game. “The last two games have been really tough to sit through in the first half, but I like our fight. Maybe it’s the mark of a young team, because we buy-in a little bit better when we find out that some things don’t work.
“In the first half our player movement and our ball movement wasn’t nearly as good, and therefore we struggled a lot more offensively. I think when our players looked up and saw 17 points at half there was just a little bit greater willingness to do what we need to do offensively.”
The loss drops the Bluejays to 4-5 through nine game for the second consecutive season. But with six of those nine games coming away from the friendly confines of D.J. Sokol Arena and three of their losses coming at the hands of teams ranked in the top 15, Coach Flanery believes the schedule is teaching his young team the lessons it needs to learn.
“I feel like I know our team better. Any coach wants to know what you have and it kind of all fits together,” he said. “I’m not saying I have many of the answers, but I think I have some of the answers based on who’s done what through this period of time, and what’s been successful and what hasn’t been successful.”
Creighton will now have a couple of days in between to prepare to host their oldest rival in the Drake Bulldogs. The Bluejays and Bulldogs have met 62 times dating back to 1977. Although Drake does hold a 38-24 edge all-time in the series, Creighton will enter Sunday’s contest having won nine of the last 14 meetings. Tip-off of the former Missouri Valley Conference clash is set for 2:05 p.m. at D.J. Sokol Arena.