Liam McNeeley was in street clothes when Creighton rolled into Gampel Pavilion on January 18 and beat UConn 68-63 for their third win in what would become a season-altering nine-game winning streak. In just his second game back from a high ankle sprain that forced him to miss five weeks, McNeeley dropped a career-high 38 points on 12-for-22 shooting to make absolutely sure that Creighton’s streak didn’t reach 10.
The true freshman and potential lottery pick in the upcoming NBA Draft matched the scoring output of Creighton’s three top scorers all by himself on Tuesday night to help the reigning back-to-back national champions rally from a 14-point deficit late in the first half and secure a 70-66 win in Omaha — UConn’s first in five trips since they rejoined the Big East in July 2020.
“Unbelievable performance by McNeeley,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “We hadn’t seen him before, and he was as good as advertising then some … he’s just a really good player, and he had a phenomenal game. One of the best performances we’ve seen of an opponent in this building in quite some time.”
Nearing the midway point of the second half, UConn had trimmed what was a 37-23 deficit down to one possession, but they still had not yet climbed over the hump to truly flip the game’s momentum on its head. That’s when McNeeley really put the foot on the gas pedal. In a span of 50 seconds, he cashed a go-ahead 3-pointer, teed up another one off the dribble in transition that was nothing by net, then stole the ball on a mishandled dribble hand off exchange out of a Creighton timeout and took it all the way down the other end for a dunk that put the Huskies in front, 53-46, with 11:06 to play.
“The guys kept finding me,” McNeeley said when asked what ignited his game-changing sequence. “Then they messed up a handoff — [Steven] Ashworth doesn’t do that a lot; he’s a really good player. But guys kept finding me, and I was confident.”
Creighton fought back to get within one possession on four separate occasions, and even tied it, 65-65, when Fedor Zugic split a pair of free throws with 2:00 to go, but UConn team captain Alex Karaban shrugged off of a 4-for-13 shooting night to get into the paint where he sank a teardrop over Ryan Kalkbrenner to give the Huskies the lead for good.
needed it, Cap pic.twitter.com/MwAOp5m4K7
— UConn Men’s Basketball (@UConnMBB) February 12, 2025
Zugic and Ashworth missed clean looks from beyond the arc to potentially take the lead on the next two Creighton possessions and UConn eventually salted the game away at the free throw with McNeeley fittingly knocking down the two foul shots to put the proverbial cherry on top of both the win and his career night in downtown Omaha.
Creighton’s Offense Fizzles Out After Fast Start
All the early trends seemed to be pointing in the direction of a lights out performance by Creighton. It was “Dollar Beer Beverage Night,” so the crowd filled in early and got plenty lubricated and fired up for the showdown between two of the Big East’s top programs.
The Bluejays didn’t waste time getting them further engaged either as Jamiya Neal knocked down a 3-pointer from the right wing on the game’s opening possession and Jasen Green blew by his defender in transition for an uncontested layup. On the other end, all UConn could do to keep was put the ball in Liam McNeeley’s hands and hope he could do enough to keep up. The first-year star produced all of the Huskies’ first nine points while the rest of his teammates started 0-for-5 with a turnover in the game’s first seven minutes.
The Jays really started to cook at that point. Starting from the 13:11 mark until and going until there was 3:04 remaining in the first half, Creighton scored on 12 of 17 possessions to open up a 37-23 lead that forced UConn head coach Dan Hurley to burn his second timeout of the game.
The Huskies responded by scoring the final six points of the half to go into the break down by eight, then came out and grabbed three offensive rebounds on the first two possessions before McNeeley stuck a three in front of his own bench on the third trip up the floor to cut that 14-point deficit all the way down to one. In the span of four and a half minutes of game time they managed to flip a potential Creighton blowout into a dogfight.
“It’s mostly that down 14 media time out you’re like, ‘Yo, what are we doing here?’ This thing is either going from 14 to 20 going into halftime, or it’s going from 14 to six or eight. It wasn’t like our season hung in the balance, but the season’s been frustrating. The season’s been tumultuous. The season’s been a lot of things, and that was a championship response to end the [first] half and the way we started the [second] half.”
Creighton knocked down 12 of their first 20 shots to build the 14-point lead towards the tail end of the first half. From that point on, they missed 20 of their final 27 shots — including 12 of their last 15 attempts from 3-point range — and got outscored 47-29.
Despite their centers Samson Johnson and Tarris Reed, Jr. both being saddled with foul trouble in each half, Creighton couldn’t make UConn pay for matching up with Ryan Kalkbrenner using defenders that stood at least five inches shorter than him. In the first half, the Bluejays outscored UConn 12-2 in the six possessions that their small lineup was on the floor. In the second half, they got outscored 17-12 on the 18 possessions where the Huskies had to operate with an undersized 5-man on the floor.
“We probably actually got it in there a little more in the second half than we did the first half,” McDermott said. “The first half, our movement out front was better. The second half, I just thought we got a little tired and our movement wasn’t as good.
“Fedor made a couple great entry passes to him, and I think Ryan’s had a rough stretch too with all the minutes he’s played, and being a little bit under the weather. Everything was good enough to win this game. You got to make your free throws against a good team, and we missed free throws tonight. We had some good looks at threes — Mason had a couple good looks; Jackson missed an open one, Isaac missed an open one, and Steven and Fedor have those one inside the last minute to take the lead. If you’re going to win against a good team, you got to make those.”
Creighton held UConn to 37.9% shooting in the first half and 40.5% shooting in the second, but they gave up nine offensive rebounds over the final 20 minutes compared to just three in the first 20. That combined with 29.2% shooting from the floor and a 12-of-19 conversion rate at the free throw line was enough for the Huskies to grind down the Bluejays and leave Omaha with a split in the regular season series.