Tatum Rembao sliced and diced her way around the North Dakota State defense in the win (Juszyk / WBR)
Senior forward Jaylyn Agnew scored 19 of her season-high 25 points in the second half, while junior point guard Tatum Rembao sliced and diced her way to a career-high 22 points — 12 coming after halftime — as the Bluejays pulled themselves out of a rut offensively to beat North Dakota State 70-59 on Monday night at D.J. Sokol Arena.
After shooting just 36.7% and hitting only one of their nine 3-point attempts in the opening 20 minutes, Creighton went 17-of-28 (60.7%) from the field, including 5-of-8 from three in the second half to improve to 3-1 on the season and keep the visiting Bison winless at 0-4.
“The game opened up a bit in the third [quarter],” head coach Jim Flanery said. “We lifted our offense just a little bit so that our back-cuts were available a little bit longer, and you saw we got a couple layups. I thought we did a good job of attacking the rim. Tatum, I thought all night attacked the rim, but in the second half even more so probably. She was good in the first half, but in the second half I thought she just did a really good job of attacking closeouts.”
“I’m pleased that we were able to put up 70 without making a ton of threes. I think that’s a good sign for us. All these games are good prep for us early in the year. With our post defense I told the team that I probably let them down [tonight] — I didn’t think we had a good enough handle on what we needed to do with their posts, and they really hurt us there. But with one day prep I thought our kids did what they needed to do. Any win is a good win. I thought their preparation made it difficult, but that’s fine. I like the experience of having to fight like we did tonight.”
Ryan Cobbins and Rylee Nudell buried 3-pointers on the first two possessions to give North Dakota State an early 6-2 lead, but Creighton put the clamps on defensively for the first rest of the quarter to take a 15-10 lead after the first 10 minutes. After giving up the back-to-back threes, the Bluejays held the Bison to just four points while forcing seven turnovers and a shot-clock violation over the final 15 possessions of the period.
But the Jays weren’t much better offensively themselves and North Dakota State eventually made them pay for not building a bigger lead to support their suffocating defense. The Bison pounded the ball inside in the second quarter as 6-foot-3 junior forward Emily Dietz scored eight points on 4-of-5 shooting on the interior to help her team pull even at 25-all as the first half winded down. With the ball in NDSU’s hands on the final possession, Creighton switched to a 2-3 zone to combat the inside attack, but junior guard and leading scorer Michelle Gaislerova got free in the corner and buried a 3-pointer in front of the Bluejay bench just before the buzzer for her first points of the night to give her team a 28-25 lead at the break.
The Bluejays did score on each of their final three possessions of the first half, but it didn’t do enough to cover up for the fact that from the 7:04 mark of the first quarter until there was just 1:41 left to play in the second they scored just 10 points on 24 possessions and had nearly as many turnovers (4) as made baskets (5).
“North Dakota State was really well-prepared defensively,” Flanery said. “I thought in the first half it was a tough go. They did a good job on most of our actions, took away the 3-point line, and they hurt us inside, which we knew they had the potential to do.”
Redshirt junior guard Sofija Zivaljevic doubled up the Bison lead with a 3-pointer less than 20 seconds into the third quarter.
Jaylyn Agnew was on fire in the 2nd half for the Jays with 19 of her 25 points (Juszyk / WBR)
Then the Jaylyn Agnew Show began.
Three straight try-and-stop-me drives to the basket with one trip to charity stripe for an and-one followed by a catch-and-sho0t 3-pointer from the left wing and just like that the senior forward had ripped off a one-woman 10-2 run in the span of two minutes and five seconds that not only matched her team’s entire second quarter output, but gave the Bluejays the lead for good in the process.
“The biggest adjustment we made at half was we lifted higher with all of our flare screen actions,” Flanery said. “They were committed to chasing over the top of every flare … so we just lifted them and said if they want to go over the top, first of all it allows the passer more room to see the cutter and it forces that post player to help for even longer, so we got a couple layups off of just setting our flare screens higher where they still wanted to chase and we had more room for the passer. Then I thought once [Jaylyn] got going we started to run some of our other right-hand drive actions for her.”
Creighton sandwiched to highly efficient stretches offensively around some stifling defense to put the game on ice. After converting on 11 of their first 13 possessions and outscoring North Dakota State 24-7 to start the second half, the Bluejays held the Bison to just nine points on the final 18 possessions of the third quarter to turn a 6-point deficit into a 51-40 lead. They extended that advantage to 19 by knocking down seven of their first nine shots, including a flawless 3-for-3 mark from the 3-point line, to start the fourth and final quarter.
After scoring just six points on 3-of-9 shooting in the first half, Agnew went for 19 on 7-of-11 shooting in the second half. First-year starting point guard Tatum Rembao, however, staggered her scoring over the course of both halves. The 5-foot-9 junior from Loveland, Colorado put up 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting in 14 first-half minutes, then went 5-of-7 from the field, including her first two 3-pointers of the season as she dropped a 12-piece in the second half to finish with her new career-high of 22, 12 of which came in the paint, a detail that Agnew felt was a big factor in her second-half outburst.
“Everyone just tells me to keep shooting and to keep my head up, so I just tried to get some easy ones and let the threes open up, especially because they were defending the 3-point line well. [Tatum] was going crazy attacking the rim all night, so that opened up some of those threes, too.”
Next up on the docket for Creighton is a trip down I-80 for Sunday afternoon showdown with in-state rival Nebraska. Tip-off between the Bluejays and Huskers is set for 2:00 p.m. at Pinnacle Bank Arena.