Inside the Box:
In two games against the best scorer in Division 1 basketball, Ty-Shon Alexander has now held Markus Howard to 31 total points. Keep in mind, Howard averages 27 per game. He has made just 10-of-30 shots overall, and 5-of-16 from three point range. He’s attempted just eight total free throws. He’s turned it over eight times. It’s been two virtuoso performances, doing what no one else has been able to do: shut down Markus Howard, and do it without fouling.
And while expending all that energy defensively, Alexander has saved enough to score on his own. He had 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting in Omaha, and 22 last night on 9-of-21 — including eight absolutely massive points down the stretch as the Jays closed out the win.
After locking down Myles Powell in a similar fashion a week ago in New Jersey, talk of Alexander winning the Big East Defensive Player of the Year award began heating up. After leading the Jays to a third road win over a Top 20 team in as many weeks, we may be shortchanging him as “just” DPOY.
We may be looking at the Big East Player of the Year.
“I guard the other team’s main player, because a lot of people see me as one of the main players on my team,” Alexander told the Big East Digital Network’s John Fanta after the game. “But they see me for my scoring ability, not for the way I can play defense. I’ve stepped up my play on that end this year. I learned so much from Khyri (Thomas), watching him do what he does best. He’s my inspiration for being a two-way player. And credit goes to my coaches, too. They told me before the season that I’m going to have to guard the other team’s best player this year. It’s an honor to have that responsibility.”
The most important stat of all is this: Creighton went 3-0 during a stretch where they played three games in six days, including road games at #10 Seton Hall and #19 Marquette, and they only trailed for a combined 16 minutes and 38 seconds in those three games.
Recap:
During Creighton’s “Let it Fly” era, two fairly constant criticisms have been their struggles against teams who challenge them physically and their inconsistency on defense. Tuesday night in Milwaukee, faced with the task of beating a Bluejay team flying high off of three straight wins where their offensive skills were on full display, Marquette decided to test their willingness to fight.
The Golden Eagles seemed determined to see how physical they could get before the smaller Bluejays were intimidated. They turned it into an old-school Big East brawl complete with super-hard screens and bodies thrown to the floor in the paint. And the Bluejays stood their ground, absorbing body blows, making one big play after another, and gutting out their third road win over a Top 20 team in as many weeks. It sounds like a broken record, but it bears repeating: this is a game recent Creighton teams do not win. They would have wilted under the pressure of a surging opponent pushing them around in front of a raucous home crowd. Instead, they silenced the crowd and held off the surging opponent time after time.
“We took a beating,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “Christian got hit in the head hard, Ty can’t talk after really getting hit in the throat, and Marcus sprained his ankle on the last play of the first half. He’s limping around the locker room right now. This was a toughness test against a really, really good basketball team.”
Alexander set the tone the entire night, and it began in the earliest stages of the game. On one of the game’s first possessions, he dribbled through traffic to collapse the defense and create space for Christian Bishop on the backline, then threw him an alley-oop.
Later, he made the team’s first 3-pointer of the game on this shot in transition.
Both teams started slow offensively. In the first half, Creighton was 2-of-10 from three-point range while Marquette was 2-of-17. They combined to make two of their first 20 3-point shots. As Creighton was adjusting to Marquette’s aggressiveness, they missed 12 of their first 17 shots overall, with four blocked shots. After that, they settled in and made 24 of their final 44 field goal attempts (54.6%).
CU had a 16-15 lead with 6:39 to play when they began to create some separation. Denzel Mahoney hit a three in front of the Marquette bench to make it 19-15:
And then Damien Jefferson and Mitch Ballock played give-and-go to create this opportunity at the rim.
After two free throws by Marcus Zegarowski and a layup by Mahoney to complete an 11-2 run, the Bluejays suddenly had a double-digit lead at 27-17. Stout defense and timely shots were combining to produce an unexpected result.
“Our guys did a great job of executing the defensive gameplan,” Ty-Shon Alexander said on the postgame radio show. “Obviously Markus Howard is one of the best players in the Big East and in the country, so my focus was to contain him. I had to make sure he didn’t score and didn’t get rolling. You have be there on the catch with Howard. He has a quick trigger on his shot.”
“Defensively, we were really good the first half,” McDermott added. “That was the difference in the game.”
The Jays, and primarily Alexander, held Markus Howard to three shot attempts and zero points in the first half. They cut off driving lanes and forced Marquette into jump shots — 17 of the Golden Eagles’ 28 first half shots were three pointers, and they made just two of them. And despite all those missed shots, Creighton cleaned the glass to the tune of a 21-17 rebounding advantage and more importantly, just two offensive boards for Marquette.
Just as they did Saturday night against DePaul, when the Golden Eagles put a mini-run together at the end of the first half to cut the lead in half, CU responded and seized the momentum as they headed into the locker room. This time, it was Ballock nailing a three as the clock ticked towards zero, giving the Jays a 32-22 lead.
There was reason for concern heading into halftime, despite a 10-point cushion. Marcus Zegarowski sprained his ankle, appearing to step on Ballock’s foot while defending. Noticeably limping as he jogged into the locker room, and when he emerged with his teammates a few minutes later, you couldn’t help but wonder how effective he’d be.
The concerns were compounded as the second half began. Marquette’s Theo John got tangled up with Christian Bishop under the basket, and Theo tossed Bishop to the ground. He hit his head on the court as he landed well out of bounds, but play continued 4-on-5 and John scored an uncontested layup — no harm, no foul. Moments later, Brendan Bailey set a screen on Alexander and drove his shoulder directly into Alexander’s throat. As the Jays’ star sat on the floor desperately trying to catch his breath, the officials ruled “incidental contact” after a short review and once again instructed the teams to play on.
Cool.
“I was trying to chase him, and he just hit me right in my Adam’s Apple,” Alexander said. “Obviously it’s affecting the way I talk right now. I was coughing a little bit, and I could barely breathe. But I knew I had to hurry up and get back on the floor because I couldn’t let this game turn into a loss.”
In the midst of a 12-4 Marquette run to open the half, two Bluejay starters headed to the bench after being roughed up. But they didn’t back down — far from it. In fact, the physicality of the game seemed to inspire them to turn things up a notch.
Clinging to a 36-34 lead, Zegarowski took the ball coast-to-coast and straight to the rim for a layup in traffic, momentarily silencing the crowd.
He did it again moments later, after Marquette had tied the game at 38, driving into the teeth of the defense for a layup. This one sparked an 8-0 run, with back-to-back three-pointers by Ballock and Alexander and a layup by Zegarowski set up by Ballock.
Though his voice was quieted as a result of the shot to his throat, his game was elevated to another level. The look in Alexander’s eyes after swishing that three-pointer less than a minute after checking back into the game said it all. He confirmed as much on the postgame show, telling the audience on 1620AM that “I had to do everything I could to get us this win.”
Alexander nailed another three a few minutes later, and his reaction as he ran up the floor showed about as much emotion as you’ll ever see out of the normally reserved guard. Marquette had pissed him off, and if there’s one thing you don’t want to do, it’s piss off a first-team All Big East player.
The Jays eventually pushed the lead out to as many as 13 on this three-pointer by Jefferson, which sent some fans scurrying for the exits at Fiserv Forum.
Ahead 59-48 with 5:30 to play, Sacar Anim gave Marquette life with a spin move off the dribble to cut the lead to single digits. It was the start of a back-and-forth as the Golden Eagles attempted to get back into the game, and the Bluejays refused to allow it to happen.
A determined Alexander silenced the crowd 10 seconds later with a cold-blooded three from the corner. It was set up by Ballock, who hesitated just long enough with the ball to draw the attention of the defense, and then threw a dart of a pass to Alexander standing all alone.
Marquette answered with two consecutive threes of their own, including one from Howard that got the arena buzzing. They’d sliced the lead to 62-56 with 3:14 to play, but once again Alexander was having none of it. He silenced them again with a three-pointer just seconds after they’d come to their feet.
With under two minutes to play and the score 65-60, the Jays stretched it back out to seven on a layup by Jefferson. But it was created by Zegarowski — he brought the ball up the floor against a pressure defense, kept Marquette’s Koby McEwen from stealing the ball despite multiple swipes at it, and dribbled straight into the paint. Setting his feet, he hesitated just enough to make the defense overreact, then hit a streaking Jefferson for a layup.
“I just take what the defense gives me,” Zegarowski said in the postgame press conference. “Iโm blessed to play with a lot of great players who help spread the floor. I just try to get in there and make the right play, whether thatโs drawing defenders in and kicking it out โ or if they stay, Iโll take the shot.”
With a seven-point cushion and the clock at 45 seconds, Alexander then iced the win. He dribbled out the shot clock, drove into the lane, and hit a fadeaway jumper from eight feet away.
“(Ty-Shon) plays with a chip on his shoulder, but he also plays for his teammates,” Zegarowski said. “He comes to practice ready and is so unselfish on both ends. He just wants to play to win. Itโs great to have someone like that, especially him being one of our leaders. He just came up big.”
Alexander told the Big East Digital Network’s John Fanta after the game that he’s not alone. “We all have a chip on our shoulders,” he said. “We’ve not gotten a lot of credit for some of things we’ve been doing in the past, especially during the preseason. We work really hard to make sure our bodies are right, to make sure we compete in practice, and to make each other better. And we do an excellent job of staying within ourselves and believing in ourselves.”
He even had enough energy to lead what is now a tradition after each win for this special group of players: the locker room dance. This time, it wasn’t just his teammates and his coaches enjoying the celebration, it was also Creighton Hall of Famer Kyle Korver — who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks and calls Fiserv Forum home. Check out Korver in the background of the video relishing every moment of this.
And what’s not to relish? Creighton is now 21-6 overall, 10-4 in the Big East, winners of four straight and eight of their last nine, with three of their last four games at home. The lone remaining road game is at ninth-place St. John’s, coming after a full week off to rest. They are now the favorite in all four remaining games according to KenPom, and if that comes to pass, the Bluejays will be the regular season Big East champions.
Beyond the Big East, BracketMatrix now lists the Jays as a four seed and climbing fast, with an average seed of 3.85 across the 108 brackets they track. Why do I get the distinct feeling that the best is yet to come?