Recap:
Over the first 12 minutes of the game, there were two ties and eight lead changes as neither team could seize control of the game. Then in the span of 45 seconds, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Ryan Nembhard picked up their second fouls and headed to the bench for the final five minutes of the half. Nursing a 26-22 lead when they exited, UConn doubled it by halftime.
Tempting as it might be to point to that as the turning point, it would be more accurate to point to a pair of bad turnovers from Shereef Mitchell that allowed UConn to get out in transition. The Jays had defended well in the halfcourt, but once the Huskies were able to make plays in the open court, it got the rowdy crowd inside Gampel Pavilion rocking — and they never settled down.
Not even at the start of the second half, when Creighton ripped off a 14-2 run where all five starters scored. It included a loooong three from Baylor Scheierman:
The Jays’ defense held UConn to 1-of-9 shooting over that span, erasing an eight point halftime deficit to take a 43-42 lead on this bucket by Trey Alexander.
But after a timeout by UConn, they got seven straight points from Adama Sanogo — two inside scores and a three-pointer — to jump-start a 14-2 run of their own that flipped the script right back to where it began.
After taking the lead briefly, CU made just three shots the rest of the day (with two of those in the final minute), hanging around with free throws and defense. As you might expect, it wasn’t enough. They did cut the UConn lead down to six once at 59-53 with just over four minutes left on a dunk from Kalkbrenner, but Sanogo again had the answer — creating space with a post move for a short layup — and the Jays were never again that close.
It was a microcosm of the entire game, where every Bluejay run was met with determined pushback from the preseason Big East Player of the Year. Sanogo was ticked off about comments Kalkbrenner made in the preseason, and used them to fuel a monster 26-point, nine rebound performance where he seemed to relish killing one Bluejay run after another.
“I take stuff personal,” Sanogo said. “So, for him to say stuff like that, it changed the way I came into the game. For this game, I was ready to go.”
He elaborated to the Big East’s John Fanta in a clip posted to social media. “I know this guy was coming to try to take over against me, and I was not having it,” he said. “Beating them tonight meant a lot. I’m looking forward to beating them again in a couple of weeks.”
His coach agreed. “Adama looked like the player of the year in the league,” Dan Hurley said. “He took that extra motivation into the game with things that were said about him. Then he made his statement accordingly.”
“He did take it personally,” Hurley added. “For us, we don’t want our players talking negatively about other teams or other programs. That bothered Adama. I think it bothered everyone. We don’t want our guys to build a name for themselves by speaking negatively about others. I’m not gonna lie to you, we looked at the quote, we played the clip (Friday).”
And so the heated rivalry-slash-feud between Creighton and UConn — simmering since R.J. Cole laughed out loud when he was asked about Marcus Zegarowski before the Big East Tournament semifinals in 2021 — has gotten hotter. (Which makes Hurley’s remark about negative talk even more hilarious. No one in the Big East talks more than UConn, and no one takes more offense to anyone else talking more than UConn.)
Game One to the Huskies. Just as this one was circled on UConn’s calendars, you can bet the rematch on February 11 is circled on CU’s — with Sanogo’s comments about looking forward to beating the Jays again as the headline.
It’s been 10 years since Creighton joined the Big East, a decade spent without the sort of hated-but-respected foil they had in the MVC — a role shared over their last quarter-century in the league between SIU and Wichita State, depending on who was better at the time.
It’s taken awhile, but they may have found that foil in UConn. We’ll see if it boils over a month from now.
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton’s streaky shooting has been one of, if not the, defining storylines of the 2022-23 season through 16 games. When they’re on, they’re really on; when they’re off, they’re really off. There isn’t much in between.
Saturday was another case where they got a ton of good, open looks, and failed to knock down even a respectable number. They shot 20-of-61 (32.8%) overall and 2-of-16 (12.5%) from three. Before they made two buckets in the last minute, they endured a 1-for-17 stretch.
Pressed about it after the game, Greg McDermott was stern in his reply to the Omaha World-Herald’s Joel Lorenzi.
That reply is surely frustrating to a segment of the Bluejay fanbase, but it’s unclear what the realistic alternative would be. The Jays were 9-23 on layups, too. Top perimeter threats Scheierman, Alexander, Kaluma, and Nembhard were shooting 29-55 (52.7%) from three-point range the last two weeks. Saturday, they were 1-of-15.
It continues a trend, where their 3-point shooting splits are wildly different depending on venue:
Neutral (5 games): 41.6% on 22.6 attempts
Home (8 games): 37.6% on 28.3 attempts
Road (3 games): 15.9% on 21.0 attempts
The good news is after Wednesday’s game at Xavier, they’ll have played three of the league’s best — with three of the toughest road venues — already. The bad news is time is running short to pick up the kind of road wins they’ll need to get where they want in March.
On the other end, Creighton’s defensive strategy was similar to the one they employed in two wins over UConn a year ago — opting not to double-team Adama Sanogo or employ other tactics like the 1-3-1 zone Providence used earlier in the week to great effect. They believed Ryan Kalkbrenner could handle him one-on-one. He could not.
A year ago, Sanogo had 21 total points in the two games on 9-of-26 shooting as Kalkbrenner bottled him up on the way to Big East Defensive Player of the Year honors. Saturday, Sanogo had 26 points on 10-of-20 shooting.
If Kalkbrenner had been successful, it might well have worked even in spite of the poor shooting, because UConn players named Adama Sanogo shot just 10-of-40 including an atrocious 3-of-16 on two-point shots. The gameplan worked, in other words. Kalkbrenner, in his first real test after returning from mono, wasn’t up to the task.
And so they wasted a historic effort on the glass in a frustrating loss. Historic? In Dan Hurley’s 137 games at UConn, this is the first game they have ever been out-rebounded by at least 15 boards. Creighton won the rebound battle 49-34.
A big part of that was Arthur Kaluma. He had 16 boards, becoming the first Bluejay with 16 rebounds or more in a game since Gregory Echenique had 16 vs. UAB on Nov. 14, 2012. In other words, the most since the move to the Big East a decade ago.
Highlights:
