The crowd was rabid. The whistles were frequent. The miscues were costly. Through all of the chaos on the court on Friday night, it was a couple of freshmen who shined the brightest for the Creighton Bluejays in a 79-67 win over Memphis Tigers team that hadn’t been an easy out for anybody since the calendar flipped to February.
In front of just over 7,000 “blue-blooded” diehard fans packed into the lower bowl of the CHI Health Center Omaha, freshman point guard Marcus Zegarowski and fellow rookie forward Christian Bishop carried Creighton with their poise in the noise. Zegarowski logged a team-high 37 minutes and finished with 14 points, eight assists, and only one turnover. Bishop added eight points and a career-high 10 rebounds in 21 minutes off the bench. A few years ago, Khyri Thomas parlayed a three-game run in the National Invitation Tournament into back-to-back Big East defensive player of the year awards as a sophomore and junior before getting selected as an early-entree in last summer’s 2018 NBA Draft. Now with two NIT games under their belts as college hoops rookies, Bishop and Zegarowski appear to be following that same formula.
“Think about where Christian Bishop’s mindset is after this game compared to after the game in New York City where we lost and he didn’t play that well,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “He’s in a different place and your motivation to work in the off-season and understand what you’re capable of if you continue to work and if your buy-in is there, is a powerful, powerful thing.
“Obviously Marcus hadn’t shot the ball very well the last three or four games, so for him to have a game where he saw the ball go in the basket against a pressing team that’s in his face the whole time and he ends up with eight assists and one turnover, those things are invaluable. It’s great to play games against good teams this time of the year. If you are playing this late in March it means you are doing something right, and I just couldn’t be more proud of what this team has done and how they’ve conducted themselves.”
Zegarowski shared the team lead in scoring with sophomore guard Mitch Ballock, who added eight rebounds, three assists, two steals, and a blocked shot to go along with his 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting. Juniors Martin Krampelj and Davion Mintz each finished with 12 points, while sophomore guard Ty-Shon Alexander chipped in 11 points, six rebounds, three assists, and a pair of steals to make it a perfect five-for-five in double figures for the second straight game for Creighton’s regular starting lineup.
Four of them were instrumental in igniting the home crowd on the first defensive possession of the evening. Krampelj was first to the floor to get his hands on a loose ball after an errant pass trickled toward mid-court, Zegarowski followed him to the floor to knock the ball free from Memphis guard Kareem Brewton, Jr., Alexander scooped up the ball, and lofted it ahead to Ballock who laid it in with his left hand to give the Bluejays a 2-0 lead 14 seconds into the game.
“When you have a freshman point guard and one of your leaders both knocking heads going after the basketball that sets the tone for the rest of the guys, and it also immediately gets the fans into the game,” McDermott said. “Our fans are blue-collar, hard-working people. They appreciate a team that is going to work, and fly around, and sacrifice their bodies to try to help that name on the front of their jersey win. That really set the tone for the entire game.”
Creighton opened up a 14-7 lead behind Alexander’s activity on the both ends of the floor. Through the game’s first five minutes the Charlotte, North Carolina native had five points, three rebounds, a pair of assists, and a steal. The Jays couldn’t sustain the hot start, however, as Memphis’ work on the offensive glass eventually sparked a 14-4 run that resulted in the Tigers pulling ahead 27-22 on a layup in transition by freshman guard Tyler Harris with 5:24 remaining in the opening half.
That would prove to be the largest lead Memphis could manage all night as the rest of the first half belonged to Marcus Zegarowski. He started his heater with a layup to cut it to three, then a three-ball to tie with 3:37 left. He followed that up with a dribble hand-off, give and go lob to Martin Krampelj for a two-handed slam dunk, a dish to Ballock for a layup, and another three-ball on a pull-up jumper to beat the first-half buzzer and give the Jays a 40-30 lead at the break as he sprinted to the tunnel holding three fingers in the air. Over that final 5:24 of the half, the freshman from Hamilton, Massachusetts outscored the Tigers on his own, 8-3, and produced another four points with his assists to Krampelj and Ballock.
Ballock thought Zegarowski’s personal 8-3 run looked so fun that he decided to uncork one of his own. The sophomore from Eudora, Kansas canned a pair of 3-pointers, then kissed a mid-range pull-up off the glass to help the Bluejays open up their largest lead of the game at 50-33 with 16:36 left. For the second game in a row, Ballock had more than doubled his scoring output from the first half of play. He scored all 10 of his points against Loyola-Chicago after halftime.
“I think shots just started falling,” Ballock said of his second-half barrage against the Tigers. “I got open looks and I’m going to shoot those every time. In the first half they didn’t go down. When you see a couple go down like they did in the second half it opens up everything on that end of the floor.”
Just when it seemed as if Creighton had seized control of the game the Tigers turned up the heat and the Bluejays started to unravel. Memphis deployed their trapping full court pressure on both makes and misses, and it resulted in Creighton turning the ball over eight times in a span of 10 possessions. That allowed the Tigers to rattle off a 17-2 run to trim the deficit down to just a single possession at 54-52 with just over 11 minutes left to play.
To compound the chaos, the Jays also were forced to fight through that rough stretch without their best player, Martin Krampelj, who was saddled on the bench with four personal fouls. Fortunately for the home team, Christian Bishop was ready to take over down the stretch of the second half the same way Marcus Zegarowski did in the first.
The 6-foot-7 freshman from Lee’s Summit, Missouri scored six of his eight points and hauled in five of his career-high 10 rebounds over the next 8:39 of game time to help Creighton stretch their lead from 54-52 to 73-59 before checking out to a standing ovation with just under three minutes left in the game.
“My mindset for every single game is just to go out there and play as hard as possible,” Bishop said. “[Mac] told me to be ready to play in case anything happens and that’s what I did.”
Mintz and Zegarowski closed the show at the free throw line for Creighton, who won going away despite committing 15 turnovers and only shooting 27.3 percent (6-for-22) from beyond the arc and 57.9 percent (11-for-19) from the charity stripe for the entire game. The Bluejays finished 18-of-26 at the rim, including four dunks, and controlled the backboards on the defensive side of the floor as well with a defensive rebounding of percentage of 91.3% over the final 30 minutes of action after a shaky start in that department.
“That was a really good win,” McDermott said. “I was scared to death of this game. I watched a couple of games from early in the season, then I watched a good portion of their last seven or eight games, and the job that [Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway] has done to get them bought in defensively and connected where they are forcing turnovers has been really impressive. They only got six offensive rebounds on 34 missed shots and they were one of the top 30 teams in the country on the backboards, so that’s a credit to our guys.
“We got a little sloppy there during that stretch when we got the big lead. When a team is desperate like that you need to slow yourself down a little, and to their credit they got us sped up and forced us into some mistakes. But I’m proud of the way our guys responded. We made a couple changes with how we were attacking the press, and the guys did a good job of being strong with it.”
The loss brings Memphis’ season to a close with at 22-14 record under the direction of Hardaway in his first season as a collegiate head coach. Creighton’s season, on the other hand, lives to fight for at least a few more days. The 2nd-seeded Bluejays (20-14) will await the winner of Sunday night’s game in Fort Worth, Texas between the one-seed TCU Horned Frogs and CU’s big red rival Nebraska. Tip-off for that game is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. on ESPNU. Like the Bluejays, the winner moves one game away from a trip to Madison Square Garden for the NIT Semifinals on Tuesday, April 2.
“It’s a great opportunity,” McDermott said. “We’re going to play one game to go back to New York City. If Nebraska wins, they come here and we get another home game, which would be awesome. If TCU wins, we’ll go on the road and try to earn our way back to New York City against a very good team in their building.”
