Iowa State set the tone for Tuesday’s game in the first minute. Their defense stretched Creighton out, and combined with the Jays’ lack of movement and lack of urgency, CU’s offense struggled to get good shots. Or any shots, really — their first possession ended in a shot clock violation; another shot clock violation followed a couple of minutes later.
They managed to piece together enough shots and stops to be tied at 15 ten minutes into the game. A pair of threes from Isaac Traudt helped them to keep pace:
IT lines it up from deep!#GoJays // 📺 truTV pic.twitter.com/EbLkz4RLI9
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) November 25, 2025
IT. Corner Three. Cash. #GoJays // 📺 truTV pic.twitter.com/yPCyzucoyk
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) November 25, 2025
Outside of the shot clock violations, that first stretch was fairly clean. Four turnovers and three offensive rebounds for ISU are manageable numbers over a 10 minute stretch if you’re hitting shots.
Then they missed 11 of their next 12 shots, and suddenly those manageable numbers were not so manageable.
A 14-2 ISU run over the next five minutes opened up a 29-17 lead, fueled by five Bluejay turnovers. That was the decisive segment of the game — CU was only within single-digits for a combined 52 seconds the rest of the game. And one play in particular during that stretch was a distillation of their problems the entire game. ISU’s Killyan Toure was in Josh Dix’s grill his entire way up the floor, eventually stealing the ball near midcourt and racing back for a dunk before Dix could even react.
“The reality of it is, right now we’re just not very good,” Greg McDermott said at the top of his press conference. “We looked like we’d never played offense before.”
With both Nik Graves and Ty Davis folding against ISU’s pressure defense, McDermott even tried Austin Swartz at point guard late in the half, the first time this year they’ve asked the Miami transfer to run the show. And he had some nice moments, including this play where he blocked a shot, grabbed the rebound, then pushed the ball up the floor and threw an alley-oop to Kerem Konan.
Austin Swartz making things happen on both ends!#GoJays // 📺 truTV pic.twitter.com/ZLKeBfjadR
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) November 25, 2025
But it was too little too late.
“I mean, it’s fighting for the catch. It’s the timing of the action, and it’s being strong and tough enough with the ball when they’re putting a lot of heat on you,” McDermott elaborated on his postgame radio interview. “Everyone knows Iowa State’s good at the rim. So you have to decide if you’re going to finish or shot fake — draw the attention, then you kick it out and that’s when you get easy shots. We just weren’t able to do that consistently enough.”
On defense, he lamented their lack of physicality. “We blew some coverages, and the issue with defense is it only takes one guy to make a mistake for that possession to look really bad and really disjointed,” McDermott said. “Our problem right now is it’s a different guy every possession to the point where we aren’t all on the same page. Obviously it all falls on me; I’ve got to do a better job and I haven’t done a good enough job getting this team all on the same page.”
Trailing 40-26 at the half, they cut the deficit in half in under four minutes thanks to five from Jasen Green and seven from Josh Dix.
Green gets ahead of the pack!#GoJays // 📺 truTV pic.twitter.com/9t8gEdc6S0
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) November 25, 2025
Josh Dix with a personal 7-0 run!#GoJays pic.twitter.com/AMK1DfmRpT
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) November 25, 2025
With the lead now just 46-38, ISU called timeout to reset and they responded with a 10-2 run that gave them a bigger lead than they’d had at halftime. From there the Cyclones coasted to the win.
For the second straight day, the Jays had been bullied and beaten by a tougher, more physical opponent. And for the second straight year, they dropped the first two games of the Players Era event, relegating them to the consolation bracket where they’ll have to fight just to leave Vegas with at least one win. And a week where they had an opportunity to pick up big resume boosting wins is now reduced to searching for signs of improvement.
“My message to the team was that they’ve gotta take ownership. Look in the mirror and think about what you can do to impact winning more,” McDermott said. “And that’s not just the players, that’s myself and our coaching staff too. What do we have to do to put these guys in a better position to be successful? At the end of the day that responsibility falls on me.”
Who’s going to respond?
Jasen Green is the obvious answer. And with Jackson McAndrew’s season-ending injury, he’s the only experienced veteran who knows what Creighton basketball is supposed to look like when it’s clicking — and who understands how to navigate the peaks and valleys of a long season.
“Obviously, I’ve had a lot of figures to look up to and see how they went about it, and I have tried to take notes from them,” Green said. “And I feel like I’m slowly learning and slowly getting better at it, but I’m nowhere near where I want to be at in terms of being a leader and being a guy that everyone can look to in games like these where we might be down a lot and we need someone to rally us together. So I’m still working on that, and I need to get a lot better at that. And I feel like with the help of my coaches, trust of my team, I will be able to get there.”
Freshman Hudson Greer, who was going to redshirt until last week, is the less obvious answer. He was candid about their shortcomings afterward.
“Bottom line, we got punked. We all collectively as a group need to rally the troops,” Greer said on the postgame radio show. “I feel like right now we don’t necessarily have a leader, so what we need to do as a group is be each other’s leaders and just step up, communicate, and do what needs to be done.”
While looking to a true freshman as a leader is less than ideal, Greer won a lot of games in high school and knows what it takes to get there. Maybe it’s not as surprising as it seems.
“Even though I’m a freshman, I feel like I need to rally the troops a little, make sure that all the guys are good, and that we’re all good on all fronts,” Greer continued.
“Obviously it starts with your play and you can’t necessarily do that if you’re not out on the floor like I was when I was redshirting. Now I need to step my voice up a lot and make sure that we’re good, because if we don’t, we’re gonna have regrets at the end of the year.”
Inside the Box:
Creighton’s 17 turnovers led to 19 points, most of them live-ball turnovers that became uncontested sprints to the rim. The Cyclones scored 50 points in the paint.
Worse, CU allowed Iowa State to grab 13 offensive rebounds which led to 19 second chance points — one day after Baylor did the same. And so 38 of ISU’s 78 points were the result of either a turnover or a failure to block out and grab a rebound.
“We’ve gotta figure out a way to control the controllables,” McDermott said, “and we’re just not doing a great job at that.”
“I feel like our hardest part right now, I think we do a solid job of our first shot defense, but after that I feel like everything just goes to crap,” Greer added. “As soon as the ball goes out, we’re not necessarily, whether it’s we’re not in the spots to box out or just choosing not to box out and be physical, we just need to take it straight to their chin and just put on the pressure, and then offensively sort of initiating and getting to that point feels like it sticks.”
Jasen Green and Josh Dix scored 15 points apiece to lead the team; Green added four assists, two rebounds and two steals while Dix had six assists (and four turnovers). And Owen Freeman scored just six points but had nine rebounds in a season-high 23 minutes.
Meanwhile, Hudson Greer had 12 points off the bench in 19 minutes, making 3-of-4 from three point range. He also added five rebounds, one assist and one steal. Isaac Traudt also hit three 3-pointers en route to 10 points.